Small modifications in greenhouse agroenvironments can have a big impact on the success of biological control programs. For instance, the application of supplemental foods during and after the release of natural enemies onto crop plants, could considerably improve their long-term reproductive and population growth prospects. As such, food supplementation represents a valuable biological control supportive strategy, helping to grow natural enemy populations before pest establishment, akin to creating a standing-army to defend crops against future pest invasions. In many places of the world, food supplementation represents a relatively new but growing component or biological control research, with increasingly better resources available to guide producers, IPM practitioners, or researchers wanting to apply or optimize such strategies to their local agents and environments. In this review, we summarize the current stage of knowledge associated with various supplemental food types, which work best to support specific beneficial arthropods as well as some tools and techniques for successfully applying this biological control-enhancing strategy. We also summarize some current challenges to the use of supplemental foods and discuss what future research is needed to adapt and optimize food supplementation for a diversity of natural enemy species.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.