Amid rising concern over the hazards of using pesticide in farming, Shanghai agricultural scientists have come up with an effective alternative: they have produced natural enemies of farm pests in massive numbers.
The use of these insects, numbering nearly 85 million, has led to a 70 percent decrease in the use of pesticides at three local parks -- the Sunqiao Modern Agricultural Park, the Shanghai Academy of Agricultural Sciences' greenhouse and the Sijing Horticultural Garden in Songjiang District, the scientists said yesterday.
The group has succeeded in artificially breeding six species of insects that can devour all the pests usually seen in greenhouses, such as aphids and acarids, within two weeks.
The insects now are effective for plants like tomato, cucumber, pepper and aubergine. They will later be used on fruit trees and flowers.
"There is no domestic precedent of breeding so many species of natural enemy insects," said Zhu Zongyuan, one of the researchers with the Shanghai Quality Certificate Center of Agricultural Products, adding it is quite common for companies to sell such insects to farmers in Europe.
Zhu hopes companies will come forward to invest in the insect-breeding industry since there are more than 4,000 hectares of greenhouses in the city, accounting for one-third of the total vegetable farmland.
(eastday.com December 3, 2003)
