4 Ways to Get Rid of Pests Based on Attack Time

Where there are plants, there are pests. Pests always cause losses for farmers, ranging from small losses to crop failure. Using pesticides seems to be a package deal with eradicating pests. However, this pesticide is often not used on time.

Besides that, there are other methods that can be used to eradicate pests (based on time) besides pesticides. However, these methods can still be combined with the use of pesticides.

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Preventive way

Preventive action means preventive action before pests attack plants. This action can be carried out in various ways, such as:

• Wrapping fruit (for example, jackfruit) to avoid fly attacks.
• Provide a plastic fence around the rice plants to protect against rat pests.

Curative way

Curative action refers to action taken when a pest attack occurs on a plant. In agriculture, there are several tactics that can be used, such as mechanical tactics, physical tactics, technical culture, planting pest-resistant varieties, using natural enemies, and so on.

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Some of these tactics will be explained as follows:

Mechanical tactics

This tactic is an effort to reduce pest populations by directly killing pests that attack plants. This can be applied to leaf caterpillars that attack cabbage plants.

Apart from killing pests directly, this tactic can also be done by:

• Inhibits egg growth or damages pest larvae.
• Giving poison to mice which are often pests of rice plants.

There are many other methods that are part of mechanical engineering

Physical tactics

Physical tactics can be carried out using various methods, namely:

1. Use light from a petrol lamp or torch to catch rice stem borer moths. Light traps can be installed in plant areas, as well as to catch other adult insects that are attracted to the light.
2. Shooting gamma rays (radioactive) at sacks containing rice, corn or beans to kill pests that attack post-harvest.
3. Using hot temperatures to kill pests that cannot tolerate heat. Therefore, farmers must also study the characteristics of the pests that attack their plants.
4. Flooding the land  to eradicate pests in the soil such as armyworms, crickets, grubs, grasshopper eggs, parasitic nematodes, and so on.

Engineering culture tactics

This tactic is carried out by implementing good and correct farming methods. There are several ways that can be done to ensure that land conditions are not suitable for pest life.

1. Consider sanitation, eradication, land processing, and so on.
2. Carry out crop rotation to disrupt the continuity of providing pests' needs.

Consider control threshold times

In general, the time to use pesticides is usually done when the pest reaches the control threshold. Spraying must be done in the afternoon, namely around 16.00-17.00, when the air temperature is below 30 degrees Celsius and the air humidity is around 50-80% , because usually the number of pests increases at that time.

Eradicate Pests on Plants

To eradicate pests, chemical pesticides are often the choice. In fact, currently, there are other alternatives that can be used by farmers, namely vegetable pesticides.

Botanical pesticides are pesticides made from plants, for example leaves, stems, roots or even fruit. This type of pesticide has several advantages, such as tending to be more environmentally friendly, cheap, can be made by farmers themselves, does not cause plant poisoning, tends not to cause pest resistance, and produces healthy agricultural products because it is free from chemical pesticides.

Botanical pesticides are very appropriate to use after the pest population is at the threshold of control, because this pesticide has properties that can inhibit the molting of insect pests, damage the development of pest larvae, pupae and eggs, and make pests, especially insects, lose their appetite.

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Consider when pesticides should be applied

The application of pesticides at the farmer level is usually carried out using 2 systems, namely the calendar system (scheduled) and the IPM (Integrated Pest Management) system.

In a calendar system, the application of pesticides does not determine whether there are pests or not because the application is scheduled. This is certainly dangerous if done in the long term because it can cause pest resistance to pesticides.

In contrast to the calendar system, the application of pesticides in the IPM system is very dependent on the number of pests attacking. In this system, pesticides will only be applied if necessary because the pests are already on the verge of control.