Joop C. van Lenteren - Böcker

This text is mainly directed towards postgraduate students and professionals in the field of research and implementation of integrated pest and disease management programmes in greenhouse crops. After presenting the major pests and diseases that affect greenhouse vegetable and ornamental crops, several chapters deal with the tools for designing and implementing IP & DM in protected cultivation with particular emphasis on biological control. Implementation and the future of IP & DM in the most important protected crops world-wide are presented in the concluding chapters. Protected cultivation is practised in many hundreds of thousands of hectares throughout the world under quite different social, economic and technical conditions. Contributions to the book reflect such a diversity of situations, from the high-technology glasshouses of northern Europe and America to the simple plastic tunnels of the Mediterranean area and temperate eastern Asia. Furthermore, the editors have entrusted each chapter to authors whose activity and perspectives could be complementary, pathologists and entomologists, from private and public sectors, and from differentiated geographical regions.

The use of biological control agents has been increasing worldwide and there are now many companies mass-producing such organisms, particularly for the control of insect pests. However, there is a great need for quality control in the production and use of these natural enemies, which include insect parasitoids and predators, fungi and viruses. This book has been written by leading scientists from Europe and North America to provide both background theory and practical guidance on this subject.