Four Good Reasons to Incorporate Biopesticides In Your Crop Management Strategy

By the Certis Field Development Team

If you’ve been following the crop protection industry over the past decade, you’ve likely noticed the growing buzz around “biologicals.” As with any new and exciting innovation, a lot of information gets generated—some of it accurate and helpful, and some potentially misleading.  With so much discussion in the market right now, it’s a good time to take a step back, refresh our understanding, and focus on the fundamentals for using biologically-based crop protection products. 

Here are four key reasons why biopesticides are gaining traction and why their advantages matter to modern farming. 

1. Shorter Pre-Harvest Intervals
   
   

One of the standout benefits of biopesticides is their significantly shorter pre-harvest intervals (PHIs). Traditional chemical pesticides often require a long waiting period before crops can be harvested to ensure safety to consumers. Biopesticides, derived from natural sources like bacteria, fungi, and plant extracts, generally break down more quickly in the environment. This allows farmers to harvest their crops sooner without compromising on safety or quality.

For growers, this means enhanced flexibility in their harvesting schedules and the ability to better align with market demands.  In apple orchards across the country, OSO fungicide exemplifies this advantage with it’s zero-day PHI, allowing growers to manage late season fungal pathogens with a highly effective product right up to the day of harvest. 

2. Shorter Re-Entry Intervals
   

Re-entry intervals (REIs) are the periods during which workers must avoid entering a treated area to ensure safety. Biopesticides typically feature much shorter REIs compared to their chemical counterparts. This benefit is crucial for maintaining farm productivity and worker safety. With reduced waiting times, farm operations can resume promptly, reducing downtime and ensuring that agricultural tasks are performed efficiently. This not only helps in managing labor costs but also supports the overall health and safety of the workforce. 

In strawberry crops, which are harvested daily as they reach maturity,
Howler EVO fungicide offers growers an effective tool to combat diseases like Botrytis while allowing workers to safely return to the field just 4 hours after application.

3. Resistance Management
   
   

Relying on a single mode of action to keep pests in check jeopardizes crop yields and leads to pest populations that evolve resistance to control measures over time. Biopesticides offer a significant advantage in this regard. Their diverse modes of action, often targeting specific pests or biological processes, make it more challenging for pests to develop resistance. By incorporating biopesticides into integrated pest management strategies, farmers can mitigate resistance build-up, prolong the efficacy of their pest control measures, and maintain robust pest management systems over the long term. 

Our new Madex XLV granulovirus insecticide provides an additional mode of action to growers combatting codling moth and oriental fruit moth in their apple and pear orchards and is a great compliment when used in tandem with pheromone mating disruption to keep pest populations low. 

4. Preserving Beneficial Insects and Nematodes 
   
   

The old way of pest control employed a broad spectrum, “hit ‘em with a hammer” approach that flat-lined all the beneficial organisms in your fields that normally contribute to keeping pests below problematic levels.

Biopesticides, however, are designed to be selective, targeting only the pests while sparing beneficial insects and nematodes. This selectivity helps maintain the natural pest control mechanisms within the agroecosystem, promoting a healthier and more sustainable farming environment. Nemaclean 10% WP, our newest bionematicide offering, works precisely this way to effectively managing challenging plant parasitic nematodes without destroying the beneficial nematodes that exist within the soil environment.
     

                                                                        (Beneficial Nematodes)

In Conclusion:

Bio-based products from Certis represent a pivotal advancement in pest management, offering shorter pre-harvest and re-entry intervals, improved worker safety, effective resistance management, and protection for beneficial organisms. This approach to crop protection embodies a forward-thinking, more sustainable option for growers looking to improve on their existing production practices. As the industry continues to embrace these natural solutions and how to incorporate them into modern agriculture, the future of farming looks bright for both consumers and the hard working people that raise the crops we depend on to feed the world.

Always read and follow label instructions.

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