Abstract

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Managing crop pests on a farm can be challenging, especially for organic growers or those who simply choose to use fewer insecticides or no chemical applications at all. One proven practice of cultural pest control is trap cropping, an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) technique that uses plants attractive to insect pests to lure them away from the cash crop. Trap crops provide many benefits, including increasing crop quality, attracting beneficial insects, enhancing biodiversity and reducing insecticide use. Trap crops can be planted around field perimeters or inter-planted with the cash crop. A trap crop’s effectiveness depends on what pest you are trying to manage and how desirable the host is for those pests. Trap cropping may offer a means of reducing reliance on chemical applications for pest management, and it has been shown to have potential for the control of numerous Brassica pests and it can be difficult to tackle through the use of pesticides (due to the resistance issues described above) and responds relatively weakly to some other IPM strategies such as the use of under-sowing with non-host plants. Thus, there is a need to investigate alternative methods of management for this pest.

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