Some Opportunities for Pest Prevention by Ultra-low Volume Spraying

The needs of the modern system of integrated control, or pest management, are contrasted with those of the prevailing view that pest control is an individual responsibility. It is argued that a rational approach to pest management must be based on a knowledge of the scale on which it must be exercised. In the case of mobile insects the scale normally far exceeds the ecologically artificial boundaries represented by fields or private holdings. The argument is illustrated by the desert locust where numbers are reckoned in millions of millions and mobility in terms of hundreds and thousands of km., calling for international action, and the Tsetse fly where numbers are reckoned in less than 10 per ha. and mobility in terms of km. Experience in the control of paddy pests in Java is drawn on to show the contribution of synoptic survey to delimit the scale and time for appropriate action, followed by synchronous application of pesticides in achieving, through control of pests, yield increases in excess of what could be expected from small scale plot trials. The value of spraying at ultra-low volume rates is that it provides the means of achieving more or less synchronous application of pesticides on the scale demanded by the problem.