The following is a list of pest management terms used to index Resources and Learning searches.
Allelopathy: The influence of plants upon each other arising from the products of their metabolism.
Biofumigation: The suppression of various soil-borne pests and diseases by naturally occurring compounds.
Biological Control: The control of a pest by the introduction of a natural enemy or predator.
Biorational Pesticides: Any control material considered to be relatively non-toxic with few ecological side effects.
Botanical Pesticides: Pesticides that come from plant extracts.
Chemical Control: Includes information on synthetic and plant-based pesticides.
Competition: Management strategies that help crops establish quickly and out-compete weeds.
Compost Extracts: Liquid extracts of compost which may be used as a fertilizer or for control of insects and diseases.
Cultivation: The use of precision technology such as GPS to cultivate for weed control.
Cultural Control: The practice of modifying the growing environment to reduce the prevalence of pests.
Disease Vectors: Invertebrates or non-human vertebrates which transmit infective organisms from one host to another.
Economic Threshold: The pest density level at which management action should be taken before the value of lost yield equals or exceeds the cost of pest control.
Eradication: The elimination of every pest individual from an area. This is different from control methods, which seek to keep pest populations to a tolerably low level.
Field Monitoring/Scouting: The periodic assessment of pests, natural control factors, crop characteristics and environmental factors through field scouting, trapping and other methods.
Flame: The use of an open flame to kill or damage weeds by drying them out.
Genetic Resistance: The relative amount of heritable qualities possessed by an organism that reduces the degree of damage to the organism by pests, pathogens, injuries or other deleterious agents.
Integrated Pest Management: A broad-based approach to pest management that integrates practices for the economic control of pests. Also called IPM.
Killed Mulches: Crops that are terminated and left on the field to act as a mulch.
Living Mulches: Plants that grow close to the ground and are sown or planted as an understory to the main crop. Live mulches protect the soil from erosion and minimally compete with the growth of the main crop.
Mating Disruption: The use of synthesized sex pheremones to disrupt the reproductive cycle of insect pests.
Mulches: Includes resources on killed, living, vegetative and plastic mulches.
Physical Control: The practice of controlling pests by removing or attacking them or setting up barriers against them.
Plastic Mulching: Plastic film that covers vegetable beds, serving to suppress weeds and conserve water.
Precision Herbicide Use: The use of site-specific information to apply herbicides at a variable rate that maximizes effectiveness while minimizing waste.
Prevention: Management practices that seek to prevent pests from becoming a threat.
Row Covers (for Pests): Fabric that covers the soil and prohibits the growth of weeds.
Sanitation: The prevention of pest problems by maintaining clean equipment and keeping field areas clear of plant matter that harbors pests.
Smother Crops: A cover crop planted near a primary crop in order to prevent the growth of weeds in that area.
Soil Solarization: The practice of covering soil with a transparent polyethylene cover in order to trap solar energy and heat the soil, a process that can control soil-borne pathogens, weeds and insects.
Trap Crops: A crop that is planted in order to draw pests away from nearby cash crops, often used in combination with pesticide applications on the trap crop.
Traps: For the physical capture of pests.
Vegetative Mulching: Straw, wood fiber or other vegetative matter applied to a field to serve as a mulch.
Weather Monitoring: The use of weather data to predict pest activity and inform management decisions.
Weed Ecology: The distribution and abundance of weeds, the effects of environmental factors on their abundance and the interactions between weeds and other organisms.
Weeder Geese/Poultry: The practice of allowing birds to graze weeds in cultivated fields.