Beyond biocontrol: promoting functional biodiversity in agroecosystems to improve pest control

Summary

In this talk I would like to provide you with an overview on different strategies that we currently study and that aim at promoting functional biodiversity in agroecosystems to improve pest control. By diversifying farm landscape, pest control can be promoted and a more resilient cultivation system can be developed. While diversification measures in time such as crop rotation or cover crops are already well-established in agriculture, in-field diversification measures, such as companion plants and the implementation of flower reservoirs, remain largely unused due to economic concerns or technical aspects of integrating them into common cultivation practices. Promoting habitat for the establishment of biocontrol in agroecosystems can in fact reduce costs in the long run. In this talk, I will share with you how we think such strategies may be used to increase the diversity of beneficial insects on potatoes, which is subjected to rotation, as well as on cherry orchards, which is perennial cropping system. Our focus, in both cases, is on the promotion of generalist predators to improve the control of the most important insect pest in these systems, the Colorado potato beetle (CPB) and the black cherry aphids Myzus cerasi. During this presentation, I will walk you through the initial challenges, how far we got on the different projects, and well as the positive benefits we harvested so far. We use a flower mixture developed in house for this project in the case of flower reservoirs, and test two different companion plants in comparison with the potato plants monoculture. I will discuss how these strategies could be effective in the long run, requiring relatively low investments for farmers and is thus likely to increase their acceptance.