The Impact of Pesticides - Academy Publish

Figure 1. Illustration of an Integrated Pest Management program in analogy to theconstruction of a house (adapted from GALLO et al., 2000).As shown in Figure 1, which resembles a “house”, the IPM needs a solid base tosustain itself. Moreover, as a house, it also requires walls (management strategies)for maintaining standing such extent of complexity. It is difficult to achieve successin the Soybean-IPM when essential steps of its bases are not performed or when it isinadequately done. As an example, the sampling procedures have to be thoroughlyperformed since they will indicate the real amount of insects present within a givenarea of the crop field and, therefore, will provide adequate parameters allowing theobedience to the accurateness of the economic threshold levels for the control of thetarget-pests. Unfortunately, in recent years the sampling performed with the aid of asample-cloth, an indispensable tool for the precision of this procedure, have beenabandoned by several soybean growers. Without a precise sampling (Figure 2), thefarmer will certainly be using insecticides wrongly (without a technical criteria),many times disrespecting the economic threshold levels (ETs) recommended by theresearch. In that case, wrong decisions and unnecessary insecticide applications,which might be used preventively, may be carried out, thus aggravating yet more thenegative impact of the pesticides on the agro-ecosystem.AcademyPublish.org - The Impact of Pesticides167