Attack! , 4.1 billion "Bug Agents"
As the temperature rises, many pests "awaken and come out of their burrows." The 4.1 billion "beneficial insect guards" in Guiyang County, Hunan Province have successively attacked, starting a defense battle of "insects occupying food".
If we don’t use pesticides, we won’t kill insects. Instead, we will release “insects” into the fields. In the past, pest control mainly relied on chemical pesticides. Nowadays, the green prevention and control method of "treating pests with pests" has become a powerful weapon to protect the countryside.
What is the principle of “fighting pests with pests”? There is a natural feeding relationship between insects in nature. The principle of using natural enemies to prevent and control pests is actually very simple. It is "one thing reduces another thing" in the biological chain. The main members of the "Bug Agent Team" are natural enemy insects, which are divided into parasitic insects. There are two categories: sexual natural enemies and predatory natural enemies.
In Baidu Village, Guiyang County, farmers place Trichogramma egg cards on the stems of various crops, waiting for Trichogramma to hatch. Although Trichogramma is less than 1 mm in length, don't underestimate it. It is the natural enemy of corn borer, Spodoptera litura, tobacco caterpillar and other pests, and is a "vanguard" in the field of biological control.
Trichogramma adults will lay their eggs into the eggs of pests and take up residence by absorbing the nutrients of the eggs. In this way, the pests will "cut off their offspring", thereby effectively controlling the pest population. Trichogramma has a very wide host range and can parasitize the eggs of more than 400 agricultural and forestry pests. It is currently one of the natural enemy insects with the widest application area and the best control effect. Under conditions of 25°C, Trichogramma can reproduce for one generation in about 12 days, and then circulate in the field to eliminate the pests in the embryonic stage.
In addition to parasitic natural enemy insects such as Trichogramma wasps and aphid braconid wasps, Guiyang County also released predatory natural enemy insects such as stink bugs and ear bugs. The release time of beneficial stink bugs is basically not affected by the climate, and the prevention and control time is long, which can achieve long-term prevention and control of pests and diseases.
This year, Guiyang County released more than 4.1 billion parasitic and predatory natural enemy insects such as aphid braconids, Trichogramma, ear bugs, beneficial bugs, and heterochromatic ladybugs, covering an agricultural prevention and control area of more than 600,000 acres.
As early as 2,700 years ago, the "Book of Songs" contains the verse "The borer has a son, and the borer carries it." The "borefly" here is a general name for some lepidopteran larvae. The borer belongs to the family Vespidae of the order Hymenoptera, and the adults can build They capture prey and place it in the nest as food for their offspring. This poem accurately describes the hunting behavior of natural enemy insects. In 304 AD, "Southern Grass and Trees" recorded the use of yellow ants to control citrus pests in the Lingnan region. It can be said that China is the first country in the world to start using natural enemy insects for biological control.
Throughout the long history of agriculture, natural enemies of pests have silently helped humans maintain the ecological balance of farmland. However, in the 1930s and 1940s, with the rapid development of the chemical industry, chemical control was widely used because of its low cost, ease of use, and quick results, while biological control was once ignored.
"Long-term and large-scale use of pesticides not only kills pests but also kills natural enemies. It is also equivalent to screening for resistant strains of pests. Many pests are caused by excessive use of pesticides." Lu Jiale, deputy director of the Natural Enemy Center, said.
"Compared with the traditional use of chemical pesticides for control, the release of natural enemies is not to completely eliminate pests, but to maintain ecological balance and control the number of pests at a low level, so as to achieve 'there are pests but no disaster'." Lu Jiale explained, " Using environmentally friendly 'biological weapons' to replace and reduce a large number of highly polluting and high environmental risk chemical pesticides can greatly reduce pollution to the environment, air, soil, and water bodies, and the goal is to maintain ecological balance."
It is a development trend to control pests with insects and replace part of chemical control with biological control. With the high-quality and green development of agriculture, natural enemy insects will be of great use.
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