CUTTING costs of IPM

摘要

Automated monitoring would cut labor cost of integrated pest management. The key to integrated pest management is monitoring—knowing what is going on in your orchard. "Monitoring is very, very expensive. It takes time and manpower, and it has to be accurate," says Dr. Larry Hull, Penn State University entomologist. He explained that he and a team of seven collaborators from across the United States are working on a project to make monitoring more efficient and less costly. Imagine a sex pheromone-baited monitoring trap that would detect the first codling moth of the season—not by catching it in a sticky trap but by detecting it electronically and then sending the information directly to your computer.