Belgium: Biobest launches new products
Chrysopa, better known as green lacewing, is a predator that often occurs in greenhouses and open fields. The larvae are extremely greedy and efficient against aphids. The adults are fragile, light green insects with long, transparent, fine-veined wings and golden eyes. The adult green lacewing is no predator but feeds with nectar, honeydew and pollen.
Chrysopa carnea can be introduced to different vegetable crops, fruits and ornamentals against different kinds of aphids. Chrysopa also eats thrips, red spider mites, whiteflies, small caterpillars, eggs of butterflies and mealy bugs. Especially in crops with a high temperature variation and/or changing relative humidity, Chrysopa will not have any problems.
The advantage of using larvae is the fact that they work immediately. With Chrysopa, only the hot spots or the entire greenhouse can be treated. If hot spots are controlled in an early stage, there is less probability of infestation of the entire crop. It is however not possible to build a population with lacewings, as adults mostly leave the greenhouse after hatching from the pupae.
Advantages:
• The activity of Chrysopa carnea hardly depends on temperature and does not depend on relative humidity. The larvae work from 12°C to 35°C and can therefore also be introduced in open fields.
• As they are rather primitive insects, there is a fairly good resistance against different pesticides.
• The larvae are very aggressive and very efficient in hot spots.
One larva can eat up to 50 aphids per day.
• Chrysopa carnea is a predator that does not only eat different kinds of aphids, but also other insects like red spider mites, thrips, white flies, etc.
• Bucket contains ephestia eggs to feed on during transport – to prevent cannibalism.
Cucumber long life solution:
With the upcoming cucumber season, Biobest presents a new, highly empowered breeding system for Swirskii mites with staggering results.
This "Long-Life-System" is developed especially for those situations where the grower really counts on the efforts of Swirskii to make a difference and where any adverse climate conditions can interfere with the efficiency of the prey mite and the life span of the breeding sachet.
Swirskii-Long-Life-System can be used against white fly (eggs and larvae) and young thrips larvae.
Advantages:
• A complete renewed system that guarantees a longer activity of the mites in the crop.
• The walkout period is much longer than with the standard system, more stable and more continuous in time.
• The mites walk out more slowly, but for a longer period, in fact the whole life span of the Long-Life-System. This offers an efficiency improvement of at least 50% in comparison with a standard sachet.
• By using this renewed mix of 2 prey mites, there will be more activity during difficult climate conditions, what can make a difference in activity both at the beginning and the end of the culture.
Swirskii has already been successfully introduced in cucumber crops, but there was a constant need for reinforcement of new breeding sachets because of the short life span of the sachets. Since a cucumber crop doesn’t offer pollen as food for mites, its population structure in the crop isn’t always ideal. Therefore it is common that reinforcement took place each 3 to 4 weeks.
Of course this has an influence on the costs (material and labor).
With the Long-Life-System this is not necessary anymore because of a continuous walkout of mites during a long period. Regardless of the environment and the food supply, Swirskii is prominent and active in the crop, with an excellent control effect.
Recommended dose:
1 sachet every two plants and repeat after 5 to 6 weeks.
For more information:
Bert Synaeve
Biobest
[email protected]
