Latest Forest IPM Stories

While international pest management programs have long relied on farmer cooperation to spread pest control information at larger scales, a study by French researchers published in the open-access journal PLoS Computational Biology on Thursday 13th October 2011 reveals that slow information diffusion within farmer communities gives rise to significant lags in implementation of pest management procedures. Food security of millions of people in the developing world has faced a growing number...

By Joshua E. Brown, University of VermontHemlock is the third most common tree species in Vermont. But it soon may drop off the list, going the way of the now-vanished chestnut and elm. An invasive pest, hemlock woolly adelgid, has been marching and munching its way north along the Appalachians "” killing pretty much every hemlock it can sink its sap-sucking mouthparts into. The adelgid recently arrived in southern Vermont.So far, only extreme cold stops the hemlock woolly adelgid. But the...

Using integrated pest management to control cockroaches is more effective than conventional methods in reducing cockroaches, U.S. researchers said. North Carolina schools are mandated to convert to IPM by 2011, so these findings give credibility that IPM has superior and longer-lasting results than pesticide use alone, study author Dr. Godfrey Nalyanya of North Carolina State University in Raleigh said in a statement. In fact, the study was so convincing that the two school districts using...

Fewer allergen concentrations could reduce asthma incidencesFor years, scientists have associated growing asthma rates among children with exposure to cockroach allergens, especially among inner-city children. A new study in the May issue of Journal of Medical Entomology entitled "German Cockroach Allergen Levels in North Carolina Schools: Comparison of Integrated Pest Management and Conventional Cockroach Control" shows that using integrated pest management (IPM) to control cockroaches is...