Many insects have large surface areas for small bodies. The surfactants soaps and vegetable oil can disrupt their cuticle and interfere with their respiration. For many sucking insects such as aphids, leafhoppers and white flies this type of approach is effective and does not lead to pesticide resistance. Insects should be monitored with appropriate scouting traps to define the times the population needs control and these types and biological controls be your insect mainstays. Work to get good identification of keep pests and study all the information on them to help you understand all the best approaches. 

Dear Johann, The catepillar pests the Bacillus thuringuiensis products can work well and are very safe. I like to mix these with diatomaceous earth that irritates the digestive tract to improve performance. Another slick trick is the use of wasp habitats which are extremely effective in controlling catepillars. A refuge of a open roof like hut for them they do a good job of hunting the worms out.  The wasp nest under roof and hunt out the worms during the day shift.  Good Luck, Paul 

in tea the tea mosquito bug is a serious pest. this  insect  in addition to tea also infests and damages crops such as cocao,,  cashew , guava etc.  entomopathogens such as fungal  entomopathogens are reported to be effective  for management of the pest.

Like all crops one must evaluate each insect that is to be controlled. It is very important that you do not use chemicals that reduces all insects with one class of chemical. Each pesticide must be used specifically for the target pests and then rotate the modes of action to prevent resistance. Careful planning and record keeping is a must so that you will know all modes of action applied and duplicate are not used. The beneficial bacteria and fungi are excellent alternatives but must be made proactively and not when an outbreak has occurred. Bio-pesticides and botanicals are another very effective and safe alternative, rosemary, thyme and oregano oil products  that are on the market are highly effective for certain insects.

What pests are you trying to control ?

That determines what is the most suitable response.

Pyrethroids have a wide mode of action, so one cannot just guess what they are controlling.

More info about my question:

In a tea producing country, they use the systemic pyrethroid bifenthrine controling insect pests. And bifenthrin was found already even in european tea blends. My vists to the land jet show me there is an enoumous lack of knowledge in environmetnal influenced agriculture, ecology of nature and especially in the use of pesticides, crop rotation and fertilizers. Mostly always same pesticids and monocrops are applied. So it is not a wonder that efficient pesticids dont help more. State farm offices wont tell you much about the background of their problems and want hear only good advices without much discussion. They want only hear an independend meaning by a voice of an foreign expert. It is interesting and somewhat astonishing and strange that even scientific results from other regions they dont accept to my surprise. Although there exists thousends of scientists with their lot of publications in the land. It seems that the producings farmers never have heard from the results and their usefull application of the findings, probable caused by a unvisible mental wall system, where scientists seem to have no personal knowledge transer from and with the farmers and also there is a general lack of discussion exchange of many open problems concerning good agricultural practice, I noticed.

So my question was naturally therefore too generaly.

But it is well known that big restistances rose by the long and permanent use of synthetic pyrethroids which clearly kill also the predators of the pests.

Under the over 1000 tea pests, among others the most damaging causing the big yield loss are named:

Red spider mite (Oligonychus coffeae)

Tea green leaf hopper (Emposca flavescens)

Leaf miner, Tea Mosquito bug, Tea tortrix/Flush worm (Helopeltis theivora)

Tea looper caterpillar (Biston suppressaria)

I found and know only generaly already some of following concepts. The desire to mitigate damages is to find an optimal mix and change and reduction of persistent and already resistant chemical tea pesiticides. Help could be brought by pest monitoring, control tactics used with integrated pest management, biological agents like Clerodendrum viscosum (Verbenaceae), sex pheromones technology, light traps, bio-pesticides, microbial management as fungal entomopathogens, chemical attractant on stickers and confusion with botanicals like Lamiaceae as rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis) to banish pests. Clearly bio-pesticides are mostly slowlier and need more knowlegde by application and therefore are not so quick efficiently.

It would be fine if you have real practical experience and efficency results in this objects, where I know only knowledge by studying.

Best greetings J HUMER

In South Africa we have developed a number of biological control agents to control insect pests:

Bti strains to control mosquitoes and flies and fruit flies

Btk strains to control early instars Lepidoptera. This does not work very well against late stage Lepidoptera of some species.

Bt strains that work against white grubs, which are larvae of beetles. Please need novel strains.

Beauveria bassiana strains to control red spider mite, whitefly, thrips, lepidoptera, weevils, mealybug, Coleoptera. It also works on flies so it should control leaf miner.

So I would assume that effective strains (and formulations) of Beauveria bassiana should work against all of these pests of tea.

The formulation aspect is really crucial because the conidia of Beauveria bassiana are highly hydrophobic and do not like being put in water. I know of one biological control company that spent five years solving this problem,. It is crucial because it determines the success or failure of a strain of Beauveria bassiana, however pathogenic it is on its own.

Given that even the chemical companies are moving into biologicals it is clear now that there is big future for the use of biological control agents in all of commercial agriculture. In this case it seems clear that there is a need to engage with biological control agents to control the spectrum of tea pests that are a problem.

Note that I have had a problem in the past with pyrethroids where they killed predators of red spider mites, which then resulted in an epidemic of red spider mite. Indeed, we now use this phenomenon as a tool when we want to enhance the population of red spider mite in biocontrol screening trials, then we spray with an early generation pyrethroid to kill all the predators without affecting the red spider mite. Perhaps this is a reason for the significance of red spider mite on tea, if pyrethroids are being applied regularly.

Hello!

I am from Brtazil, were its cultivated Ilex paraguariensis to produce tea. I have been working o n Biocontrol with entomopathogenic fungi against: mite and a psylidae.

Thank you.

Luis Alves

Combination or exchange of tea species possible?

Would it be is possible to use Ilex paraguariensis to produce tea in mixture, crop rotation or instead to Camellia sinensis var. sinensis for Chinese teas, and Camellia sinensisvar. assamica for Indian Assam tea to reduce chemical pest control?

May be, it would be interesting to broaden or exchange the production with this tea plants to reduce pest infestation and pestizides. Naturally it may be they have a too different biology to combine them. Clearly its also another tea species.

What do you think about this? J HUMER

Ilex paraguariensis is a perennial culture. So, I think crop rotation with it is very difficult. In Brazil we have Camelia sp. production, but I don´t know if is possible to use both plants in mixture to produce tea. I don´t see in market one tea with both plants...

In Brazil, we have exploited the perennial characteristic to improve the biocontrol with Bt, fungy and predators mite. Also, alternative control measures are very usefull, but we know that herbicides are very used to control weeds, pyrethroids and used to control psyllids, etc etc etc...

We don´t have a organized production sector which acts to fiscalization on residues to prove chemical control use in plantation.

Crop rotation is always the best. Where I'm from we have corn and soybean rotations. Unfortunately the crops that have the highest return in a particular area are often not rotated due to the economic factors. This has produced many insect, weed and plant disease issues. It is very difficult to get farmers to change the way they do things unless the short term financials are there. The other options is to plant other crops on the outside perimeter of the fields to attract and maintain beneficial insects. Planting sunflowers has been shown to attract Orius spp. that will help control thrips. Planting grass  that attract t cereal aphis help attract the predatory wasps to control aphids. True IPM looks at all these options along with plant selection, crop rotation and chemical applications.

It would be very interesting to be at a roundtable discussion to hear all these interesting views. Collaboration among growers of specific crops and those who are more diversified would only have positive results. 

Hello Dear

I find attachement file. Please see that

Hedge row borders are a bastion of biological control. The periodic planting of flowering herbs is also extremely helpful. These combined with rotation of sufficient duration and diversity is critical. When winter wheat is used to establish a 2 year ley for forage and or hay the corn soybean corn rotation can be used with rye as a winter cover before soybean and hairy vetch before the second maize crop this rotation will improve the soil organic matter and is very helpful in control diseases and pests. Because of the legumes used to provide Nitrogen needs the cost of this rotation is low and optimum yields are possible and yields better than conventional production under drought yields because of the ability to increase soil organic matter. In this rotation which can be combined with mixed animal and cropping manures can be returned into the rotation as compost before the fall planting of winter wheat. Compost is highly effective in building soil organic matter and stimulating biological control of major diseases and pests. For biological controls to be optimized a long term systematic agriculture is needed. 

Insecticides Acephate & Fenitrothion could be applied to controlling tea insects.