I am using chemical fungicides and biological controls (fungi) to control pests. i Fear that the chemicals might have adverse effects (kill) on the biological control (fungi) and make it useless... I could like to know the approach i can apply to this applications.
It depends on which chemical you are using? Every pesticide has own currency period. Some degradates within few days, some few weeks, some months, so cannot say a simple period for all types of fungicides.
Check first if they are compatible, the basics are it should cause less than 25% mortality of the BCA when used two weeks after using the fungicides. That answers your question use the EPF at least two weeks after using the fungicides if they are compatible it will work perfectly well.
It will depend on the chemistry and breakdown of the fungicide and the kind of biological control you are using. For example, we use a hydrogen peroxide fungicide followed by a biocontrol product 24-48 hours later, which works well as the fungicide action and breakdown is rapid.
What chemical have you put on and what biocontrol are you going to use?
Thanks for the responses;
Daniel, am using the following chemicals for the control of powdery mildew;
mandpropamid
metalaxyl
chlorothalonil
potassium phosphite
mancozeb
cymoxanil
propamocarb hydrochloride
fenamidozone
After which i could also like to apply metarhizium, trichoderma, beauveria bassiana, and use bacillus bacteria as controls...
any compatibility chart for the above chemicals with this BCA?
Hi dear Mr. Nyamagwa
Some of fungicides that used such as metalaxyl is systemic and need more time to degradation. I think after 3 weeks you can use fungal biocontrol agent.
Hi,
My advice is you should use first BCA for pest control, and after a few days (a week) fungicides.
You should using sulfur to control powdery mildew.
Sulfur is efficient, and you can apply biological control 7 days after.
Geofrey, check with Dudutech for information about compatibility charts with BCAs in Kenya. They do many trials to establish which pesticide are compatibility with BCAs which are used in almost all flower farms and fresh vegetable producers in Kenya. Any technical assistance or anybody in R & D will give you this information.
First try to check if the chemical fungicide is having any deleterious effect on the biocontrol agent. Try to grow the Biocontrol agent on the Fungicide amended medium. If the biocontrol agent grows then we can infer that the said fungicide has compatibility with the biocontrol agent and they can be used simultaneously . On the other hand if the biocontrol agent is not able to grow on the fungicide amended medium we can infer that chemical fungicide is deleterious to the biocontrol agent. So, check if both are compatible by growing BCA on the fungicide supplemented medium. Each chemical fungicde has its own time till what time it is effective and when it degrades in to noneffective chemical/byproduct. So check info about the stability of your chemical . Some chemical fungicides will degrade in couple of days and some may persist for longer and continue to be effective.
It depends on the sensitivity of biocontrol agent to fungicide and on fungicide degradation time to non-active compounds. Look on instructions and literature on fungicide(s) used to find these data.
As mentioned above this can depend on the type(s) of fungicide and the biocontrol agent, but also on where and how the materials are being applied. For example Howell (2007) showed that a co-application of fungicide and a biocontrol agent as seed treatments had activity of both, even when the fungicide was toxic to the biocontrol agent in plate tests (see http://apsjournals.apsnet.org/doi/pdf/10.1094/PHYTO-97-0066). It also can depend on motility and localization. Foliar applications may not influence an organism that is active below ground, as in indicated by some of the difficulty in controlling soil-borne pathogens with fungicide applications.
You must test in vitro by grow the BCA in petri dish amended with Fungicides, then you can see the colony growth of BCA
It depends on the chemical and bio-control agent you are using. Some of the chemical like carbemdazim is totally inhibiting the trichoderma sp. and some strobilurins too. Therefore, for effective use Chemical and bi-control agents, one should take a gap of one week, if weather conditions are not favorable or rainfed based system one should take atleast 24 hrs. Gap.
All The best
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