Role of biodiversity in integrated fruit production in eastern North American orchards

Abstract

1 Diversifying agricultural ecosystems to enhance biological control is a promising way of promoting sustainable pest management. 2 In the present study, monoculture apple and peach with standard insecticide treatments were compared with three biodiverse treatments (polyculure, monoculture with companion plants and polyculture with companion plants) with reduced standard insecticide use. 3 Abundance of insect predators was increased by both the presence of companion plants and extrafloral nectar but parasitism of the leafroller Platynota idaeusalis was not affected. 4 There were no consistent effects of biodiversity treatment on either tree growth or fruit yield. Insect injury to Empire apple and peach fruit was not consistently affected by the biodiversity treatments. Granny Smith apples were harvested later than Empire and had more fruit injury in the biodiverse treatments than the standard insecticide control. 5 A reduction in pesticides with added biodiversity proved to be a viable alternative to standard chemical insecticide management for temperate tree fruit. Increases in the natural control of pests resulting from increased plant diversity has promise for reducing the reliance on chemical insecticides for pest suppression.

Effect of Achillea millefolium Strips and Essential Oil on the European Apple Sawfly, Hoplocampa testudinea (Hymenoptera: Tenthredinidea)

“…Furthermore, the scent, the abundance of pollen and nectar of apple cultivars influence the degree of attraction by H. testudinea and the rate of apples damaged [6,47] and may consequently modulate the success of the management of a flower strip in the orchard.…”

Managing biotic interactions for ecological intensification of agroecosystems

“…However, increasing the diversity of predators may increase the frequency of intraguild predator species and, therefore, diminish the effectiveness of pest control through predator-predator interactions (e.g., Schausberger and Walzer, 2001). Furthermore, although increasing plant diversity can be translated into better pest control, it is often less effective than intensive chemical treatment (e.g., Brown, 2012), leading to a significant decrease in the overall crop yields (Letourneau et al, 2011). Therefore, a better knowledge of the network properties is still needed to understand the relationship between complexity and ecological stability (Montoya et al, 2006) and to make efficient use of increased biodiversity as an ecological service.…”

Comparación de la abundancia y biodiversidad de artrópodos auxiliares entre parcelas de cultivo ecológico y convencional, en plantaciones de cítricos, caqui y nectarina

“…Además del valor intrínseco de la biodiversidad, la disminución de la biodiversidad lleva implícita una pérdida de servicios generales del ecosistema como la productividad, la sostenibilidad, la estabilidad y la resiliencia (Tilman et al, 2002;Brown, 2011), así como de servicios particulares como el control biológico de plagas (Ives et al, 2000;Wilby y Thomas, 2002;Gurr et al, 2003).…”

“…Los depredadores son evaluados en el cultivo de cítricos mediante trampas adhesivas (Soler, 2000;Alonso, 2003;Bru y Garcia-Marí, 2008), aspirador entomológico (Alvis, 2003) o golpeo (Franco et al, 1992;Liang et al, 2010), así como mediante muestreo visual en frutales (Brown, 2011). El muestreo visual es una técnica utilizada para depredadores grandes y que no tengan tendencia a ocultarse.…”

“…Esta hipótesis se basa en el incremento de la biodiversidad de plantas en parcelas ecológicas tanto en la propia parcela como en los márgenes y en zonas próximas, así como a la propia estructura del cultivo en las parcelas ecológicas (Krebs et al, 1999;Brown, 2011).…”