biopesticides Archives - BioSolutions Conference & Expo

Botanical Insecticides Offer More Flexibility Than You Might Think

March 20, 2017

Botanical insecticides based on plant essential oils or plant extracts have been around forever. But growers are using them in modern ways that offer more flexibility and control over a pest management program.

Dr. Murray B. Isman, Professor (Entomology/Toxicology) at the University of British Columbia, has been focusing research on botanical insecticides and shared some of the developments he’s seeing at the recent Biocontrols USA West 2017 Conference & Expo.

We spoke with Dr. Isman about some of the advances with these products and how you can apply them in your own production next season.

Q: Why do you think you’re seeing more adoption of some of the botanical insecticides among growers now?

Isman: More growers appear to be adopting botanical insecticides in part because the arsenal of conventional crop protectants is being progressively whittled down by regulatory actions. While there are new conventional products being brought to market, their numbers are well down from a couple of decades ago, and far fewer in comparison to the number of products withdrawn from the marketplace. Another factor is that the younger generation of growers are better educated — therefore more willing to try alternative products and technologies — and more concerned with long-term sustainability of their livelihoods and the environment.

Q: What are some of the direct benefits botanical products provide in comparison to other types of materials?

Isman: Botanicals are certainly not a panacea for crop protection, but they do offer minimal, if any, harvest restrictions, fewer other restrictions on use, and generally good compatibility with biocontrols. They are also compatible with other pest management products and can be used as tank mixes or in rotation, so they offer a lot of flexibility.

Q: How are some of the newer botanical insecticides different from past materials, and how are growers using them?

Isman: The products based on essential oils provide rapid contact action, but with the advantage of residual action that is not based on toxicity but on behavioral effects on pests. In short, they can provide protection for days or weeks after their immediate effect has diminished because they continue to repel or deter pests from recolonizing crops plants and/or laying eggs. In some pest/crop combinations we have seen good residual action, but without the problematic pesticide residues associated with conventional insecticides.

Q: What was one of the more unexpected topics for attendees you covered during the session?

Isman: Unlike most conventional pesticides that smell awful, most of the essential oil-based products actually smell quite pleasant! On a more serious note, most botanicals are based on natural mixtures rather than a single bioactive chemical. As such, the probability of insect populations developing resistance is tiny relative to the probability with a conventional insecticide or even a microbial like Bt.

To get more information about the recent Biocontrols USA West event or the Biocontrols Conference & Expo Series for 2017, visit BiocontrolsConference.com.

Rethinking Biocontrol With Bio-Brews

February 1, 2017

Tom Costamagna, Director of Growing at American Color, an ornamental crops producer in Orange, VA, is anything but orthodox in his approach to pest and disease control, yet he gets results. With more than a decade of experience with biocontrols and biopesticides to back him up, he prefers to complement what growers are already doing — spraying. He’s just changing what they are applying.

Enhancing Plant Health and Quality

Costamagna focuses on microbials and entomopathogenic fungi. He uses bio-brews, which are mixtures of regenerative microorganisms (also known as efficient microorganisms or EM) that occur freely in nature.

A bio-brew is not a pesticide, but rather a biostimulant, which activates the natural processes of plants, benefiting nutrient use efficiency and/or tolerance to abiotic stress. Biostimulants are not fertilizers or pesticides, as they work regardless of nutrient content in products and do not have any direct actions against pests or diseases. Instead, they act on the plants’ vigor, rounding out crop nutrition and crop protection by working in synergy with them.

Inundative Control: A New Approach

Costamagna prefers to think of using bio-brews as an inundative or full immersion approach, which he takes due to plant purchasers with little to no tolerance for the presence of pests and the damage they cause.

To achieve inundative control, Costamagna says he recommends calendar spraying to provide ample CFUs (colony forming units) of biocontrol/biopesticide agents like nematodes and entomopathogenic fungi or bacteria. Regular applications of bio-brews must start at the plug and liner stage and continue through shipping to ensure pest populations are low to nonexistent.

Cost effective bio-brews work well for calendar spraying and have a longer shelf life than other beneficials. With the industry’s zero-tolerance view toward pests, Costamagna says taking an inundative approach to prevent crop damage makes more economic sense than treating problems you don’t have with expensive chemistries.

Costamagna got the chance to tackle just such an issue in his role as Director of Plant Quality with a previous employer, Mid-American Growers in Granville, IL, now part of Color Point.

Under Costamagna’s direction, the operation’s growers applied bio-brews topically to plants once a week and injected them into the irrigation water. They also made additional applications when needed based on scouting intel. This routine continued throughout the year, no matter what crops they were growing, because the bio-brews were safe enough to spray on full, open bracts without any phytotoxicity.

Costamagna jokes that it wasn’t long before chemical companies were asking why Mid-American Growers wasn’t doing as much business with them.

“The business didn’t go anywhere, we just changed our practices,” he says. “That year we saved thousands of dollars in chemicals because we were no longer taking an aspirin for a headache we didn’t have.”

Scouting Indispensable to Bio-Brew Success

Costamagna has since implemented bio-brew applications, coupled with a strong scouting program, in his current role at American Color with the same positive results.

The bio-brews Costamagna uses are unique formulas developed for specific insect and disease targets. They incorporate a number of essential oils, ETOH (200-proof ethyl alcohol), and apple cider vinegar, which kills the active microorgansims while preserving each blend and leaving behind specific metabolites and enzymes. Apple cider aids in the preservation of the product while helping to break the cuticle of insects/mites, allowing the metabolites and enzymes to penetrate and kill. The essential oils in each blend cover the targeted organism to kill it by suffocation and leave a slight film on the leaf that gives the plant a sheen or luster. The blends of oils also agitate and excite the targeted insects and mites while having repellency, anti-feeding, and anti-oviposition properties.

Costamagna incorporates bio-brews into the irrigation water at American Color. He says he purchases latent inoculum of EM-1 from TeraGanix so he has consistency from batch to batch. It is used to make AEM (Activated Effective Microorganisms), which are sold ready to use as AG1000. This is primarily used in growing media but can also be sprayed.

A scouting program is critical to the success of a bio-brew program, Costamagna says, because growers need to have a good idea of where pest populations are trending (detectable, increasing, or decreasing). In addition to bio-brews and other pest and disease control measures, there are times when they must make the shift to using conventional tools (e.g., synthetic pesticides).

“At the end of the day, we need to produce quality plants,” Costamagna says. “When making this transition, we must choose wisely, assessing the risk and considering compatibility and that a knee-jerk reaction is not made qualitatively, but quantitatively, which is the result of a good scouting program.”

Although American Color internally produces its bio-brews, Costamagna says a majority of the products applied are available commercially. And for those worried about the complexity of implementing such a program, they shouldn’t be.

“The biggest thing growers need to realize is that they are not alone in going down this path,” Costamagna says. “There are companies and consultants out there that do not manufacture a commercial product and have the best interest of growers in mind. They are all about solutions that make economic sense and result in the desired control growers need.”

Here’s Why You’ll Want to Attend Tom Costamagna’s Presentation at the 2017 Biocontrols Conference

Tom Costamagna, Director of Growing at American Color in Orange, VA, worked for 10 years in the Department of Entomology at University of California, Davis (UC Davis) with Dr. Michael Parrella, one of the key researchers early on studying the implementation of biocontrol and biopesticide use in floriculture. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, Costamagna worked as Senior Superintendent of Agriculture for UC Davis, where he continued to run Dr. Parrella’s research programs in developing applied pest control strategies in commercial greenhouse production to ultimately lead to a reduction in pesticide use by the environmental horticulture industry.

After leaving UC Davis, Costamagna worked for a year at Aldershot Greenhouses in Las Cruces, NM, before taking a position as Director of Plant Quality for Mid-American Growers in Granville, IL, which is now part of Color Point. Here he developed a bio-brew microbial spraying program as part of his integrated pest managment strategy.

Costamagna served as the National Production Manager for Dümmen Orange upon leaving Mid-American Growers. He took up his current position at American Color in 2016.

Using Biopesticides and Biological Control Agents Together

December 16, 2016

Raymond Cloyd “If I’m using natural enemies in my pest control program can I also use biopesticides?” That’s one of the more common questions we hear from growers about biocontrols, and we’ve enlisted Kansas State University’s Dr. Raymond A. Cloyd to help provide the answer. Dr. Cloyd’s presentation, “Biological Control and Biopesticides: An Integrated Plant Protection Strategy That’s Time Has Come!” will kick off the Biocontrols USA West 2017 Conference & Expo, March 2-3 in Reno, NV. While combining these two useful biological tools makes sense, he says the process is not always as simple as you might think.

Q: How common is this practice of using beneficial insects and biopesticides together?

Cloyd: I think it’s a relatively new type of plant protection strategy that many growers are not really familiar with yet. They’re learning on the job and that’s what a lot of our research has focused on. We have been working on programs to help growers understand what they can expect.

For instance, we have been doing evaluations on entomopathogenic fungi — we get a lot of questions about whether these products are going to be harmful to biological control agents or natural enemies. I think there’s a misconception that these are completely safe together — it’s not true in all cases. Some of these entomopathogenic fungi may be either directly or indirectly harmful to certain natural enemies. There’s a steep learning curve on using these together. But it is still a viable strategy.

Q: What’s the most common mistake you see when growers are trying to incorporate biocontrol agents and biopesticides together?

Cloyd: I think the most common mistake we still see is the timing of application. Biological control is proactive, not reactive. You have to keep pest populations in check for these solutions to work most effectively. You have to have a really good scouting program in place, whether you’re using an integrated biocontrols program or a traditional chemical program.

Q: What’s the most surprising thing you think growers will take away from your presentation at the Biocontrols Conference this year?

Cloyd: Costs. For example, if you’re trying to integrate entomopathogenic fungi into your program for management or suppression of western flower thrips populations, then application costs may be less expensive than when using conventional insecticides. When you compare standard insecticide rotations, you can get the same level of suppression, but at a lower cost.

Growers typically look at direct costs when making pest management decisions, and the costs for scouting and labor tend to be similar whether you’re looking at a biocontrol solution or a conventional insecticide one. But when you consider the indirect costs of using biological control agents and biopesticides together in an integrated program, you may experience less resistance issues, a safer work environment, and less potential for phytotoxicity. There’s not always an obvious direct dollar value, however these are real cost savings you should consider.

Register now earn more about biopesticides, biocontrol agents, and how they can work together in your crops more effectively and profitably at the Biocontrols USA West 2017 Conference & Expo.