The brush busters success story.

摘要

The efficacy, economics, labour-efficiency and acceptability of the individual plant treatments were improved by several new innovations, including all-terrain vehicles (4-wheelers) equipped with sprayers and electric pumps; light-weight, backpack sprayers; highly effective herbicides and spray-marking dyes; and simplification and refinement of application techniques. However, the rate of adoption and learning of the available individual-plant-treatment was slow because ranchers were inexperiencedwith the technology and unaware of the high levels of plant kill possible with individual plant treatments. This study introduced the 'Brush Busters' programme, which aims to expedite the adoption of individual plant treatments for brush control in Texas, USA. During the planning process, three factors were seen as critical to the recognition, acceptance and adoption of the Brush Busters programme, these are: (i) the marketing programme needed a unique identity; (ii) because treatments had to be safe and highly effective, a standard of performance for treatments was established; and (iii) the instructional/educational materials for selected methods had to be brief and non-technical. Based on a 1999 state-wide survey of the county Extension agents in Texas, the Brush Buster programme was considered successful due to several reasons (viz., effective and predictable kill, relatively low cost, simple and easily available information, and the environmental safety and selectivity of methods used). All control methods selected for the Brush Busters programme had to provide 70% or higher root kill of the treated plants -- mesquite, cedar and prickly pear. Several control methods for each plant are briefly described.