Tomato Integrated Pest Management : an Ecological Guide
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Why this guide? About this guide This ecological guide is developed by the FAO Inter-Country Programme for IPM in vegetables in South and Southeast Asia. It is an updated version of the Tomato IPM Ecological Guide dated June 1996. The objective of this ecological guide is to provide general technical background information on tomato production, supplemented with field experiences from the National IPM programmes connected to FAOs Vegetable ICP, and from related organizations active in farmer participatory IPM. Reference is made to exercise protocols developed by Dr. J. Vos of CABI Bioscience (formerly IIBC/CAB International) for FAO. The exercises are described in Vegetable IPM Exercise book, 1998 which contains examples of practical training exercises that complement the technical background information from this guide. Who will use this guide? National IPM programmes, IPM trainers, and others interested in IPM training and farmer participatory research. How to use this guide The ecological guides are technical reference manuals. They give background information and refer to exercises/studies that can be done in the field during training of trainers (TOT), farmers field schools (FFS) and action research to better understand a topic. The information in the guides is not specific for one country. Rather, this guide is an inspirational guide that provides a wealth of technical information and gives ideas of IPM practices from several countries, mainly from the Asian Region, to inspire IPM people world-wide to conduct discovery-based IPM training and to set up experiments to see if such practices would work in their countries and continents of assignment. IPM cannot be mastered through books or guides: the field remains the main learning base. This is why the link with the exercise manual mentioned above is important. National programmes can use the guides to prepare training materials like hand-outs specific for a training activity. The ecological guides can be used as working copies or as basis for preparation of IPM curricula and materials for farmer-trainers. The FAO Vegetable ICP hopes that this guide may be an inspirational tool for discovery-based IPM training and farmer participatory research. Tomato Ecological Guide - 2000 1 Introduction 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Integrated Pest Management: beyond bugs Integrated pest management, IPM, is still strongly associated with pests, however, it is much more than just pest control. IPM is not about eliminating all pests, in fact, low level populations of some pests are needed to keep natural enemies in the field. The aim of IPM is to reduce pest populations to avoid damage levels that cause yield loss. The entry point of an IPM programme may often be focused on reduction of pesticide use. However, the basis of good crop management decisions is a better understanding of the crop ecosystem, including that of the pests, their natural enemies, and the surrounding environment. Monitoring of the crop is the first step into understanding ecosystems. Experiences over several years with vegetable IPM show that good crop management practices may lead to reduction of inputs (including pesticides), without reduction in yield. In fact, yields often increase in IPM fields. In Vietnam for example, the average pesticide use in 103 FFSs in the period autumn-winter 1996 to summer 1999, dropped from 4.41 applications in the Farmer Practice plots to only 1.63 in the IPM plots. Yields of tomato in the same period were on average 9% higher in the IPM fields as compared to the Farmer Practice control. IPM strategies are different for each crop, for a country, for a region, even for one location, depending on local varieties used and local agronomic practices. IPM can never be delivered in a package, it needs to be developed, adapted, tailor-made to fit local requirements. Yet, experiences from one area, or from other countries may be helpful to set up field studies for testing the components that may lead to tolerable pest populations and a high yield of good quality produce. Some of these experiences and practices are summarized in this guide. 1.2 The vegetable IPM Programme The FAO Inter-Country Programme for IPM in Vegetables in South and South-East Asia (Phase I) is a five-year regional program (April 1996 June 2001) for the development and application of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) in vegetable production. The programme, funded by the Netherlands and Australia, operates through governments and NGOs in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. Development objective of the IPM programme is Sustainable, profitable and environmentally sound production of vegetables in the participating countries through the development, promotion and practice of IPM by farmers and extension staff. The vegetable IPM programme aims to empower vegetable farmers by training them to become experts in the production and marketing of their own produce. The IPM Farmer Training is based on the following principles: Farmers learn how to grow a healthy crop, Farmers learn how to regularly monitor their crop for informed decision making, Farmers learn how to conserve, augment and introduce natural enemies, Farmers become experts in the production and marketing of their own produce. The vegetable IPM programme supports Training of Trainers (TOT) courses, Farmer Field Schools (FFS) and field studies (farmer research, or Participatory Action Research (PAR)). 2 Tomato Ecological Guide - 2000 Introduction 1.3 Developing vegetable IPM based on rice IPM The FAO Inter-Country Programme for the Development and Application of IPM in Vegetable growing in South and South-East Asia has branched off from the Inter-Country Programme for IPM in rice in South and South-East Asia. This programme, on rice IPM, has been running for many years and has trained thousands of trainers and nearly one million rice farmers in Asia. However, looking at the ecosystem of rice compared to vegetables, there are major differences. This has important implications for pest management strategies in both crops. Rice is indigenous to Asia; most vegetables are imported from abroad (even though this may be many years ago). Therefore, rice has a large population of indigenous natural enemies whereas vegetable may not. Pest management in rice is mainly based on informed non-intervention, i.e. continue monitoring the field but do not apply pesticides. A complex of natural enemies may well be able to keep pest insect populations low, and rice plant can compensate for some crop injury. In vegetables, there may not be indigenous natural enemies that are effective enough to keep pest populations low. Pest management strategy is therefore based on informed intervention: other pest management strategies need to be applied to keep pest populations low. This important difference is summarized in the following table. Differences between Asian Rice and Vegetable IPM and Implications for Management Strategy: CROP RICE VEGETABLES Origin Indigenous Mostly Exotic Indigenous (Arthropod) bio-diversity Extremely divers Not as divers Stability ecosystem Stable (if not disturbed) Not as stable Management strategy INFORMED NON-INTERVENTION INFORMED INTERVENTION 1.4 Tomato: a bit of history The Latin name of tomato is Lycopersicon esculentum Mill., member of the family Solanaceae. Tomato has become a major world food crop in less than a century. The tomato, considered a vegetable but actually a fruit, is native to the Americas. It is believed to have been domesticated in Mexico, where a variant of the wild cherry tomato was brought into cultivation as early as 700 AD. The name tomato is in fact derived from the Mayan word xtomatl. When the Spanish Conquistadors first introduced the tomato to Europe, in the mid-sixteenth century, it was grown as an ornamental plant. Once discovered to be edible, however, it was soon adopted into European cuisines. The British were slower to accept it as a food, fearing it was poisonous because of its membership in the Solanaceae family, which included poisonous species such as the deadly nightshade. The same fear persisted among the colonists in the United States until the early nineteenth century. The tomato has come a long way, not only in distance from its centre of origin, but also in terms of varietal improvement, enhanced storage qualities and processing techniques. Today, numerous varieties, some transgenic, are cultivated in all regions of the world. Very large quantities are processed and preserved in a variety of forms. Much of the volume of processed tomatoes is packaged as bulk tomato paste and used to make products such as juice, sauces and soups. (FAO, 2000) Such versatility coupled with a growing demand for the fresh fruits, has pushed the development of tomato as one of the main crops of the century. Breeding which intensified in the US in the 1930s and Europe in the 1960s, has been based on hybridization (ref. www34). Tomato Ecological Guide - 2000 3 Tomato Crop Development 2 TOMATO CROP DEVELOPMENT SUMMARY This chapter describes general growth stages for tomato. Accurate growth stage descriptions are very useful in pest management since plant susceptibility to pests varies with the growth stage. Some growth stages can tolerate damage by certain insect pests or diseases whereas in other stages crop damage may result in yield loss. Trials to study the ability of the tomato plant to compensate for pest injury at particular growth stages is an important element of IPM field studies. A table in this chapter indicates the susceptibility of growth stages to injury from various insect pests and diseases. It can be used to develop, with farmers, a more appropriate growth stages description (or cropping calendar) for your area, based on locally used varieties and terminology. 4 Tomato Ecological Guide - 2000 Tomato Crop Development Presently there is no standard terminology for describing tomato growth stages or crop stages like there is for rice.