Date: 3/30/99

Time: 9:20

Type: Symposium

Number: 116

New agents for pest management in minor crops

J. Wyman and *S. Chapman, Department of Entomology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706
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Minor crops are typically of high value and have a low tolerance for pest damage in the market place. Consequently, these crops have been heavily reliant on pesticide use for insect management. The escalating costs of insecticide development, growing uncertainty over the impact of FQPA on the availability of traditional insecticides, the occurrence of widespread pest resistance, pesticide residues on raw product, environmental concerns and toxicological issues, have all combined to focus attention on the need for alternative insect management tools to reduce risk. Ideally, such tools would circumvent resistance with new modes of action, have greatly reduced toxicological and environmental impacts, be compatible with ecologically based IPM programs and be economically feasible for registration and use. In vegetable production systems, the expedited registration process for low-risk insecticides has resulted in a significant expansion in new products being developed to address these issues. Examples include new biologically derived insecticides (e.g. spinosad, abamectin); pest-specific synthetic insecticides targeted at aphids (e.g. pymetrozine, pirimicarb) and lepidopteran pests (e.g. tebufenozide, emamectin benzoate, indoxacarb); low-risk systemics (e.g. imidacloprid, and the neo-nicotinyls); and new chemistries for broad-spectrum foliar control (e.g. chlorfenapyr, fipronil). Our challenge in the minor crop commodities will be to develop use patterns for these materials as components of ecologically based insect management programs, which will achieve long-term economic insect control while avoiding pest resistance.

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