'Attract & Kill' - ein innovatives Konzept zur biologischen Bekämpfung von bodenlebenden Schädlingen

Summary

Soil dwelling pest species are difficult to control because of their cryptic life style and their unpredictable distribution belowground. The efficacy of biological control agents is limited, mainly because of low rhizosphere competence. Here we propose to use a strategy where pest are attracted to killing agents instead of bringing killing agents to the pest. We developed capsules emitting carbon-dioxide which are combined with an specific isolate of an entomopathogenic fungus or Neem. The principle of an attract & kill strategy takes advantage of the behaviour of soil dwelling larvae which use CO2 for locating their host plants. Components used for the production of the capsules are just contain biologically derived substances and therefore do not pose any specific problems for use in organic production systems.