For healthy potatoes - Bayer CropScience

The natural fauna, e.g. earthworms, must not be adversely affected by the use of crop protection products.
Field margin strips encourage beneficial insects to
establish themselves.
One of the activities encouraged by
ICM is to set up temporary, or long-term,
protection areas for animals. Examples of
the latter include turning areas, field
margins, set-aside and edge strips that are
intended specifically to provide a haven for
beneficial insects, which can make a valuable
contribution to pest control. It is estimated
that temporary protection areas (3 to
8 meters in width) extend to some 2 million
kilometers in Germany alone. Integrated
Crop Management also recognizes
the value of long-term protection areas
such as hedges and wind-breaks; and it
encourages the setting-up and retention of
suitable habitats within agricultural landscapes.
For example, linked biotopes and
wildlife-corridors intersecting agricultural
landscapes can help to provide continuity
between these areas of protection. The beneficial
insects that find shelter make an
important contribution to agro-ecosystems,
whether by pollinating crops or
by predating on crop pests (biological
control).
Integrated Pest Management combines
biological, mechanical, chemical and biotechnological
methods. The use of biological
control agents is becoming increasingly
important around the world. In Germany
for example, Trichogramma-parasitoids
have been used for more than 25 years
against the European corn borer. Thus it is
important that chemical substances are
carefully tested for their selectivity to the
target pest(s) before finally being developed
into a crop protection product. If a
substance is compatible with beneficial
insects, it has a greater chance of succeeding
in the market – because products will
therefore not preclude the parallel use of
ladybirds, parasitic wasps or predatory
mites. Even if a new active substance is not
sufficiently selective, information is still
gathered on the sensitivity of beneficial
insects, and on the recovery time they need
after an application in order to regenerate
their populations. This information is then
translated into guidelines for the use of the
product.
Targeted applications benefit
the environment
The use of precision application technologies
is another way of ensuring the efficient
and responsible use of crop protection
products. One example is seed-treatment,
where the product is applied to seed
lots with great accuracy, resulting in a considerable
reduction in the amount of product
used on a given area of land. Seedtreatment
or application to the furrow
involves treating a total area of between
60 m 2 and 500 m 2 per hectare, rather than
the entire area of 10,000 m 2 . In other
words: products used for seed-treatment
come into contact with less than one percent
of the soil in the field receiving the
treated seeds. These products act mainly
against biting and sucking pests or against
disease-causing pathogens that attack the
seedling during early growth. Non-target
organisms living on the plants are not
exposed to the treatment at all.
Tree-trunk application is another effective,
reliable method for the targeted control
of pests. It involves injecting a systemically-active
insecticide into the trunk. The
active substance is then transported within
the sap, away from the point of injection,
and into the leaves. In this way, leaf-eating
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