Integrated Pest Management (IPM): guide

How to apply IPM

Prevention

You can use preventative methods to reduce the risk of pests, weeds and diseases becoming established. This can include:

• crop rotation
• encouraging natural predators
• cultivation and tillage practices (how the land is prepared to grow crops)
• growing pest-resistant varieties
• hygiene measures (for example, regular cleansing of machinery and equipment, sweeping hard surfaces)
• using trap crops to draw away pests

Monitoring

Animals and plants classified as pests or weeds may be important to the structure and function of local ecosystems. Effective monitoring ensures you only use pesticides when necessary. You should choose the correct control method for your land and apply it at the right time. This can include:

• inspection of crops
• pest, weed and disease identification
• forecasting and assessing levels of pest populations
• the use of early diagnosis systems
• advice from professionally qualified individuals, advisers or agronomists

Use of thresholds

You can use thresholds which take into account pest, weed and disease pressures, region, crops and particular climatic conditions to help you decide when to use control measures.

Once a threshold, or predicted threshold, has been exceeded (such as when pest population levels, pest damage or weed prevalence become economically or environmentally unsustainable) you should take action to control the pest.

Intervention and control

The control methods you choose should be practical and effective. You can use sustainable physical, biological and other non-chemical methods.

Physical control measures can include:

• hand weeding and mechanical weeding
• physical barriers such as netting and mulching

Biological control measures can include:

• predatory species
• biopesticides, such as using microbes or pheromones to disrupt insect mating

If you use checmical pesticides, you should use:

• the minimum effective dose and application frequency
• targeted application to minimise potential negative impacts – for example, using precision technology such as spot treatments and weed wipers  

Managing pesticide resistance

You can use anti-resistance strategies to maintain the effectiveness of chemical pesticide products. This can include using:

• the appropriate dosage rates of pesticides
• pesticides with multiple modes of actions

These strategies can be used when:

• the risk of resistance against a plant protection measure is known
• the level of harmful organisms requires repeated application of pesticides to the crops

Review and evaluation

Review the success of all plant protection and pest control measures regularly to ensure their effectiveness. This can be done by creating an IPM plan which you should review every year.