Biocontrol News and Information
CABI Publishing

Biorational

December 1996, Volume 17 No. 6

BIORATIONAL

Integrated pest management involves the use of many techniques, including biological control, to provide effective control of pests with minimum harmful side effects. Those techniques which are compatible with the use of biological control or have little impact on natural enemies have been described as "biorational".

Compost Control

Organic growers have long known that composted garden waste is good for producing healthy crops, and this has now been demonstrated scientifically. Joint research by EcoSci Ltd (established to look at the feasibility of recycling organic waste products) and the University of Exeter, in south western England, have shown that compost derived from garden waste can suppress a number of common plant diseases by 60-100% in laboratory and greenhouse trials. Field trials are planned to confirm these findings and to establish dosage rates.

This research has far reaching implications if it provides a way of decreasing the current high use of chemical fungicides. Plant pathogens that develop resistance to chemicals require increasingly higher doses to maintain control. Organic treatments rarely have such a problem, being naturally "buffered", which appears to compensate for any increase in pathogen resistance. In addition, no harmful residues remain in the soil, which is also improved both chemically and physically by the composts. So far the project has focussed on the most common plant pathogens encountered in the south west of England, but research on a wide range of crop diseases found in other parts of the UK and overseas is already underway.

For further information contact: Tom Young, Managing Director, EcoSci Ltd, Wolfson Laboratory, Higher Hoopern Lane, Exeter EX4 4SG, UK; fax: +44 1392 425302.