All gardeners and gardening enthusiasts always want to have a garden that is easy to care for. However, there are lots of drawbacks that always slow down the process of making a garden meet the above-stated condition.
Even though there are major challenges, with adequate knowledge, gardeners can be able to put in place perfect measures that limit the chances of diseases and pests invasion.
The first step that needs to be taken is a gardener planning and surveying the local conditions in the garden. These may include aspects such as:
- The soil properties
- Sun intensity
- Whether it is windy or if at times have a higher humidity
- Choosing the best plants and varieties that can thrive and remain healthy
- Choosing whether to buy seeds or plants in pots
Some other aspects that you may also check on are driving your attention to the flowers and also to healthy foliage. You also need to check on the roots since they will help you gauge the plantsβ quality among other things.
What is plant protection in agriculture?
Plant protection in agriculture refers to the measures and practices employed to safeguard crops from pests, diseases, and weeds. It involves the use of various techniques and strategies to prevent, control, or manage these threats to ensure healthy plant growth and maximize yield.
Plant protection methods may include the application of pesticides, biocontrol agents, and cultural practices like crop rotation and sanitation. The goal is to maintain the health and productivity of crops while minimizing the negative impacts of pests and diseases on agricultural production.
The goal of Integrated Plant Protection: strong and resilient plants
Immediately the best plant has been found for your garden, your next area of focus needs to be on supplying both care and the needed nutrients. Fertilization is a major issue that should be taken seriously since only well-nourished plants are capable of fighting against pests and even diseases.
Plants that lack nutrients are always easy prey for pests and even fungal diseases since they offer minimal resistance. Apart from using fertilizers, gardeners can also adopt the use of plant restorers to help their plants fight pests and diseases.
Most importantly, cultivation measures such as the right cutting of plants, promoting organisms for mutual benefits, tillage, and even hygiene measures also play crucial roles on plants’ health.
General Principles Integrated Plant Protection
General prevention and fighting harmful organisms are most likely to be achieved by choosing to adopt the following options:
- Crop rotation β use of enough gardening techniques (for instance stale seedbed technique before planting)
- Planting dates and densities
- Under-sowing
- Conservation tillage
- Pruning and direct sowing β needs to be used only where necessary
- Adoption of resistant cultivars and certified seed and planting material
- Adoption of balanced fertilization
- Liming, irrigation, and drainage practices
- Avoiding the spread of harmful organisms through high hygiene such as regularly cleaning machinery and even other equipment
- Protection and caring of mutual beneficial organisms
- Enough plant protection strategies and measures
- Use of ecological infrastructures both inside and outside production sites
Besides all the above-mentioned best practices that can be adopted, moderate biological, physical, and even non-chemical methods need to be a priority when they prove to be satisfying.
All the pesticides that are used also need to be accurate and specific as much as possible and have the least or zero effects on humans and also non-harmful organisms and also be environment friendly.
The professional user of the pesticides needs to minimize the intensity of the use and also other forms of intervention by lowering the doses, reducing the frequency of use, and that they do not harm beneficial organisms.
In cases where the resistance against a given plant protection measure is known and also where the extent of harmful organisms needs repeated use of pesticides to the plants, existing anti-resistance measures need to be applied to stabilize the efficacy of the products.
This may involve the application of pesticides with different types of action. According to the records on the use of pesticides and on the monitoring of damaging organisms the professional user needs to check the success or the effectiveness of the used protection measures.
Damaging organisms needs to be monitored by enough methods and even tools when needed. Those tools need to include those having the potential to observe fields such as scientifically giving warnings, forecast, and quick diagnosis systems, and also use advice taken from professional and qualified advisors.
Relying on the information from the monitoring, the professional user needs to choose whether and also if applicable when to introduce plant protection measures. Massive and scientifically fit threshold values are primary components in decision-making.
IPM (Integrated Pest Management) as a part of Integrated Plant Protection
Commonly known as IPM, is simply a system that controls pests and one that is built to be suitable. IPM is built upon the best combination of biological, cultural, and even chemical measures for given situations and is not limited to plant biotechnology.
This offers the cheapest and, most environmentally friendly and also socially vouched for a method of controlling insects, weeds, diseases, and also other pests witnessed in agriculture.
Avoiding pests speeds up through the application of the right crop cultivation methods, observation of the plants to track pest levels, other levels of natural control methods such as the enhancement of beneficial insects to make sound decisions about the control of pests when needed.
A major principle of working IPM is to come up with pest control methods that come along with all needed control measures and also locally present methods, and also sensitive to the local and environmental needs. A successful user of IPM will weigh down how cost-effective each of the alternatives is and also for the whole control plan.
Integrated Plant Protection with the help of GeoPard
Protecting plants can be made easier and achieved through the adoption of efficient smart farming, this is because the internet of things is capable of calculating the status of the plants and also the number of pesticides needed to avoid the damage.
Monitoring stations that gather data on four factors: crop growth, soil moisture, pests, and even natural disasters are capable of lowering the cost involved in controlling pests.
Data gathered through smart devices such as HD cameras, sensors, micro weather spots, and even pest capture lights is sent to platforms located at monitoring stations to aid with the support of agricultural research and production.
Monitoring and forecasting are primary methods of heightening plant protection and also reducing the application of pesticides.
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