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Buhle Nkomo

Tobacco is susceptible to a number of pests that can cause serious damage to roots, lower yield, reduce leaf quality, in some instances transmit diseases and ultimately decrease revenue.The Tobacco Industry & Marketing Board (TIMB) encourages the implementation of practices such as the Integrated Pest Management by the tobacco farming community with a view to enhancing quality, yield and revenue while managing costs by particularly reducing unnecessary pesticide or insecticide applications.

Integrated Pest Management can be defined as a combination of systematic biological, chemical and cultural ways of controlling pests.

The thrust of Integrated Pest Management is the use of suitable environment friendly and cheaper methods of lowering pest levels in crop production.

The Integrated Pest Management is premeditated to help tobacco farmers protect their crops from pests at the lowest possible costs.

The Integrated Pest Management system which should have three aspects and the most important one being field scouting, a regular and systematic checking of the crop designed to detect the occurrence and concentration of pests.

Suitable scouting entails examining crops repetitively and on a weekly basis with an aim to collect pest samples for proper identification in order to come up with precise pest control methods.

After identifying the pest, the farmer needs to ascertain the extent the pests have reached in a bid to determine the economic threshold, before control measures are economically and environmentally justified.

Lastly, a pest control resolutions should be established based on the number of pests or level of crop damage at which it pays to spend money on a pesticide treatment.

It is ideal that pests build to relatively large numbers to be chemically controlled for example if there a more than 10 bud-worms per 100 plants, an insecticide can be applied but if it’s not the case bud-worms can be controlled by hand picking as spraying a small number might lead to pest developing resistance.

If an insecticide is necessary, farmers should choose the most likely to target the pest and not harm beneficial insects.

If need be, systemic insecticides can be applied to the soil and taken up by the plant to control leaf-feeding insects, however farmers should consult the Tobacco Research Board (TRB) or AGRITEX officers for guidance.

There are other types of control measures that may be taken against insects in tobacco production and these include biological and cultural control methods.

Biological control method is the use of a living organism to control another living organism. This includes nematodes, pathogens, predators, and parasites thus naturally occurring predators and parasites comprise biological control agents.

These organisms can contribute a lot in controlling pests. For example, as a group, parasitic wasps, predatory stilt bugs, and other beneficial insects can kill 80 to 90 percent of bud-worms and horn-worms in a field.

Several cultural practices can help reduce insect infestations and decrease the need for insecticide applications. The following cultural practices aid in the management of insect pests in tobacco farming.

Early land preparation can help in controlling pests. Ploughing at least four weeks before transplanting reduces cutworm infestations and may aid in wire-worm control.

Destruction of seedbed transplants as soon as practical after transplanting is completed is important as this practice keeps aphids and other insects from developing high populations on the transplants and migrating to nearby tobacco fields.

Another cultural way is the management of field borders to reduce insect habitat. Farmers should keep field margins clear of weeds and tall grass to reduce feeding, breeding, and over wintering sites for grasshoppers and other insects that move from these sites into tobacco.

It can never be overstated that good agronomic practices in pest control are key to successful growing of a clean and heavier bodied crop leading to greater revenue due to higher quality of the leaf.

For additional Information contact: TIMB on telephone numbers 08677004624 /6 or 0772145166 /9 or 0279-22082 /21982 or 025-3439 or 067-24268 /29246 or 0277-2700 or 064-7280 or 0271-6772 or Toll Free Numbers 08006003 /0731999999/ 0712832804 or E-mail: [email protected]