Quote:
Originally Posted by Nicolas Naranja
I work full time in an entomology lab. While I agree with the sentiment about there being natural predators, sometimes they don't exist in the area they are causing problems or don't occur in numbers high enough to have any impact. You don't have to have vast areas of a single crop to experience economic levels of disease. I have 1/4 acre of bananas behind my house that is 5 miles from any other commercial planting and I still had Sigatoka this year. Finally, farms exist to make profits just like any other business, how would you feel if someone was going to dictate to you how much money you got to make next year. What you are really proposing is a whole lot more manpower to manage pests and diseases.
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Bacillus thuringiensis strains exist worldwide and have been in development since the 1950's. Strains have been developed which are effective against specific types of insects, ie, leaf eating insects or certain types of fly larvae (israelensis strain, or Bti). These are widely used against larvae of mosquitoes, black flies and fungus gnats.
As far as I know these bacterial measures are not in widespread use by commercial growers.
There is a .pdf document that can give better insight by searching for "bacillus thuringiensis israelensis" it should appear as the third link.