No part of this publication, apart from bibliographic data and brief quotations embodied in critical reviews, may be reported, re-recorded or published in any form including print, photocopy, microfilm, electronic or electromagnetic record without written permission from the publisher: Pudoc, P.O. Box 4, 6700 AA Wageningen, the Netherlands. Population models for fruit-tree red spider mite and predatory mites -R. Rabbinge Pests, disease and weeds have threatened crop production since man began agricultural activity. They are a nuisance to the farmer in every agricultural system, be it subsistence farming or the high input farming now practised in many parts of the Western world.
Printed in the NetherlandsIn the last decade, pest and disease management have become accepted terms in crop protection. This is due both to a revolution in thinking and to a considerable increase in knowledge. The rather simplistic concept of destruction or total exclusion of a plant pest or disease has changed, and made way for the concepts of supervised control and pest and disease management. In agricultural systems, disease or pest outbreaks are no longer disasters which must be accepted, but are now manageable and manipulable phenomena. Intensive agriculture is developing into a technological rather than a biological activity.More and more techniques with well-understood effects have been developed and are beginning to dominate the less well-understood methods of biological control. This enables the farmer and his advisers to manage the agricultural system to meet a well-defined target, that of maximum economic return in the short term and sound agricultural practice in the long term.Crop protection is incorporated into a cropping system to manipulate the pathosystem of a crop in a way that prevents economic loss. Crop protection research is following a similar trend: the accent is changing from the 'scientific', to the 'technological'. Both types of research focus on crop protection. Scientific and technological activities are not considered to be qualitatively different, nor can an appeal be made to concepts of'pure' as opposed to 'applied' science. They are considered as points on a convenient spectrum that is defined in terms of the objectives and expectations of the practitioners.This development in crop protection research -from studying and describing effects to understanding, governing and manipulating cropping systems -has been made possible by an enormous increase in our knowledge of the prosesses of crop growth and crop production, and by an improved understanding of how crops behave and can be affected.Systems analysis and simulation have contributed considerably to this development by providing the insight which has led to crop management policies and techniques. Modern crop protection is a complicated affair in which risk, cost-effectiveness and environment must be considered. Genetic resistance, crop husbandry methods and weather determine the course of insect-pest outbreaks and disease epidemics. Pesticides are often...