Hi,

Please consider you can not rely on one way to control pest population in your field. I suggest to combine one or two other safe ways with C. carnea.

Best

Arash is correct that you cannot rely on one predatory species, especially one that is very much a generalist, and cannibalistic too. One big question I have is what do you consider to be the economic injury level?  In other words, what density of pests are acceptable without causing economic damage. That is important to know when you are making your decisions. For predators to persist in a greenhouse you must be willing to to accept some density of the pest to always be present, that may not be acceptable if the pest is a vector of disease or causing downgrading of product for some reason. As it is, in an enclosed habitat there will be boom and bust cycles of the pest and predator. If you want to use predators you may find that you may have to rely on occasional inundative releases, using them in essence like a pesticide application. I think that Coccinellidae are a better choice than Chrysoperla. I suggest you read up on the systems used in The Netherlands and Israel, both of those countries have robust greenhouse vegetable and flower production industries, no sense in reinventing the wheel.

Hi,

you can find this paper:

Shaaban, A. (2008). Evaluation of the Green Lacewing, Chrysoperla carnea (Stephens) (Neuroptera; Chrysopidae) against Aphids on Different Crops. Journal of Biological Control. 22(2). Website:http://journalofbiologicalcontrol.com/index.php/jbc/article/view/40064

 I attached also a paper for you, please find it.

Dear abdallah ibrahim 

i agree with Dr. Paulson, you can't control all those pest with one predator, that we know , well i have tried once using Chrysopa to control aphids and i use to release enough eggs on the infested leaves, but what happened that ants at night came and took all the eggs   result aphid infestation increses a lot, what i mean as reported by our colleague combination: for tuta absoluta go for Nesidiocoris tenuisor macropholus this is for tomato, for WF if it's not carring viruses it's better to use parasitoids such as eretmocerus and for aphids you can combine between chrysopa and Aphidius colemani and any ladybeetle you have in sudan can be used with , meanwhile you have to put in mind that may be you can face a pest such as Red spidermites or broadmites and i don't think you have their natural ennemies , so you have to prepare a low side effect acaricide to the released beneficials.

regards  

I agree with dr G. S. Paulson,s suggestions.

 Dr.Azzedine Ouldbeziou you have contributed appreciable information, but why didn’t you use hatched larvae when you encountered with removal of eggs by ants?

Dear Professor Farhanuallah , 

i'm very honored you found my contribution as an appreciable information, many thanks ,regarding your question why i didn't use hatched larvae, well actually i forgot to mention this in my answer yesterday but even new hatched larvae were attacked too, more in small scale we can manage to release hatched larvae but in large scale(greenhouses) how long it will take to cover all the crop(cucumber in our case)?

that's why i suggest to use ants bait first, than hanging eggs and releasing Aphidius and six spotted zig zag lady beetle 

regards 

Dear Abdalla Abdelrahim Satti, 

 Biocontrol works best when you rely on established procedures. The biocontrol agent producers have invested many years of research to offer these procedures. They give you very detailed informations concerning the necessary prey densities, the moments of release, the techniques of release (to avoid the activities of ants),  and the dosage of predators or parasitoids. They have developed wrappings that avoid cannibalism and they experimented the number of release points that conduct to satisfying and reliable results. Furthermore, they have developed in International Working Group 5-Year Projects all that quality control experiments and procedures to assure that the population you release is able to assume the job they are released for. Having all these data not only published in literature but assured by biofactories, I cannot understand, why people return to the beginnings and try to do it themselves again and again. It is not less expensive to invest all those hours to reinvent all of this, than to apply the products that are existing in the markets. Perhaps you can pass a technical semester in one of the biofactories IBMA represents worldwide, to discover all of these procedures. Wish you the best of luck,

Carola Meierrose 

dear Carola,thank you very much for this overview about the bio-control agent producers,i agree with you they gave every thing about their product, but with my short experience dealing with koppert,we need to focus on the local beneficial s,we had an exp. with them to control broad mites and aphids,they sent us what they saw will work well, but no results, same thing to control aphids they sent us, H axiridis,this works well at the beginning but we didn't see it at all after that(UAE),what i want to say yes we can use their product for the pest that has no local natural enemies but for the one that exist already why don't we focus on those???? we have a local lady beetle ( Menochilus sexmaculatus) it can be found in the field almost all the year except in summer where it aestivate, then it will appear in sept. and octob. so why   not starting with this as they start ????? we have other local beneficial 

regards 

Dear Azzedine,

You are very right when you stress that first of all one should analyze and rely on the autochtone beneficials, if possible! Your answer reminds me that we had a very negative field experiment result (non published then - 1984 - at the demand of the German partner) when we released Trichogramma against Lepidopterans in Zea mais, in Southern Portugal. The egg parasitoids, selected to be very active, most probably occupied the niche of Telenomous in the system. The Lepidopteran hosts were Ostrinia  and Helicoverpa armigera, coexisting in the crop, with eggs on the leaf surface or in the cob tips, accessible to Trichogramma, but there were also Sesamia nonagrioides hidden under the leaf comb where only Telenomous could reach thanks to its longer ovipositor and bigger size. The experimental plot fell down literally. We also had native Trichogramma there (later described as T. cordubensis) and we reared them at our lab. 

On the other hand, there are some hints for the field or greenhouse applications of beneficials that have, also in Germany (by S.A.Hassan), been discovered: There, the whole chain of mass production was under intensive quality control, and the insects to be released had been given to the farmers very early in the morning at the doors of the biofactory to be released that day. And there was harsh failior, the producer couldn't explain at all, as the control insects which stayed in the biofactory hatched healthy without problems. They then found out that the driver made a coffee pause before releasing the insects and had, on a sunny summer day, left the insects in the closed car  in the sun - and the insects were dead by heat before they came to the fields. Unexpected! Another problem can be the release point. One cannot fight busy ants, but the release points can be protected against them (in tomato, ants wouldn't climb the plant, they would stick on the gland hairs). 

Chrysoperla is a very good demonstration insect to convince farmers if you show them the cleaning effect on a heavily infested plant by aphids, in a pot in their office. (I have gained in times a research project with GTZ  through this technique). We released them as eggs  fixed on small pieces of gaze, hours before hatching. Koppert and Biobest release them as young larvae mixed with wood meal, in greenhouses, on top leaves.

Thus, I agree with you that local fauna should be favored and sustained. In our experiments with Trichogramma in open field tomato we found out that the simple non-application of insecticides was enough not to have problems with Helicoverpa armigera. We used wettable sulfur against spider mites and fungus disease. Whiteflies were present but not a problem. The weight and quality of the harvest was convincing the farmer and the tomato plant technicians. 

Good luck!

Dear Carola

Many thanks for those valuable information, may i have the article that talked about:

On the other hand, there are some hints for the field or greenhouse applications of beneficials that have, also in Germany (by S.A.Hassan),

regards 

Dear Azzedine,

this is a misunderstanding: Hassan gave the hints, when we worked at his institute, (Biologische Bundesanstalt, Darmstadt, Germany), but these hints are not published. So I only wanted to cite him as author of the knowledge. I try to share these experiences because they may help and are just not published. I understand my role in this forum a little bit as a bridge person, as I am retired and have worked long before the Internet Era. Very often, when one works a long time in a subject, there is that tendency to believe that every other person knows the same things. It's your questions that show me what might be useful, hopefully.

regards

Dear Abdalla,

Dear All,

Larvae of Chrysoperla carnea s.l. are polyhagous predators which means that their efficiency cannot be very high especially not against Aleyrodidae or Tuta absoluta. In case of Aleyrodidae the best biological control opportunity may be the use of monophagous parasitoids (e.g. Encarsia spp.) with some other predators. I suggest you to visit URLs of Koppert and Biobest. As to relevant references, there are many excellent books on biological control.