Integrated pest management components and packages for tropical crops

The most common vegetable crops grown in the tropics are tomato, eggplant, and pepper in Solanaceae; cucumber, bitter gourd, bottle gourd, pumpkin, and chayote in Cucubitaceae; head cabbage, Chinese cabbage, broccoli, and radish in Brassicaceae; beans in Fabaceae; and okra in Malvaceae.

In the last decade, the IPM Innovation Lab has pioneered the development of IPM packages for these crops by stacking tactics developed for the pest problems of a given crop from the time of planting the seeds, to the time of harvest. Some of the components developed are: solarization of seed beds, use of coconut pith and plastic trays for seedling production, treatment of seeds/seedlings with Trichoderma spp., Pseudomonas fluorescens and Bacillus subtilus for combating soil pathogens and inducement of defense,  grafting seedlings of solanaceous crops on resistant rootstock to overcome bacterial wilt, use of pheromone traps for caterpillar pests, use of microbial and botanical pesticides, area-wide management for fruit fly control, and adoption of conservation biological control in addition to augmentative and classical biological controls when needed.

IPM is crop-, site- and season-specific and the components of the packages also need to be adjusted accordingly. It is dynamic and requires changes when pest scenarios change or a new pest is introduced.