Classical biological control with predatory mites - the significance of complex trophic interactions

Project Information

Grant agreement ID: FMBI961550

Project closed

Start date 1 February 1997

End date 31 January 2000

Funded under

• Specific research and technological development programme in the field of the training and mobility of researchers, 1994-1998

Total cost No data

EU contribution No data

Coordinated by

Universiteit van Amsterdam
Netherlands

Objective

Reducing pesticide inputs requires alternative, e.g. biological, pest control measures. Biological control of spider mites usually requires multiple inundative releases of predators. The only permanent pest reduction through inoculative releases of predatory mites was achieved on cassava in Africa. Te inoculative use of predatroy mites is hampered by a poor understanding of their desired ecological/biological attributes. Ecological theory has considered the importance of desired attributes for systems involving two trophic levels, but it is increasingly clear that attention must be paid to host plant traits and alternative food. The study of food webs and its bearing on biological control is in its infacy. In this poroposal, the cassava case will be used as a paradigm to hypothesize on the importance of complex trophic relationships for success in biological control. The hypotheses concern (1) the importance of host plant attributes for pest suppression and (2) effects of interactions between natural enemies on control success.
A training in the fundaments of ecology/population biology and its application in biocontrol is a prerequesite to enhance sustainable agriculture in Portugal. Reducing pesticide use will have a positive impact on the environment and make crop production more cost effective. Commercial production of biocontrol agents.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.

• agricultural sciences › agriculture, forestry, and fisheries › agriculture › sustainable agriculture

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Programme(s)

• FP4-TMR - Specific research and technological development programme in the field of the training and mobility of researchers, 1994-1998

Topic(s)

• 0302 - Post-doctoral research training grants
• TL15 - Population Sciences (inc.Ecology, Evolutionary Sc., Biodiversity & Conserva.)

Call for proposal

Data not available

Funding Scheme

RGI - Research grants (individual fellowships)

Coordinator

Universiteit van Amsterdam

• EU contribution: No data
• Address: 320,Kruislaan ; 1098 SM Amsterdam ; Netherlands
• Total cost: No data

Participants (1)

Not available

Portugal

• EU contribution: No data
• Total cost: No data