Eight years' experiences of IPM in Hungarian apple orchards

In Hungary eight years, experiences are available in implementing IPM. In order to make logical decisions about the necessity of treatments and to choose the most suitable selective preparations - taking into consideration also the interest of parasitoids and predators - the most important investigation or monitoring methods used are: systematic plant surveying, monitoring the population dynamics of the main pests, operating pheromone traps in order to observe important lepidopteran spp., monitoring the occurence of predators and parasitoids, registering the occurence of secondary pests. In the recommendation of the program, the insecticides Pirimor (pirimicarb), Dimilin 25 WP (diflubenzuron), Insegar (fenoxycarb), Match (lufenuron), Dipel (Bt), Zolone (phosalone), Neviken (sulphur+vaselinoil) were applied. As acaricides Mitac (amitraz) and Torque 55 (fenbutin oxide) were used. Only those fungicides were applied, which did not endanger predatory mites. Using IPM technology, we succeed in: keeping the density of leaf miners below the level of economic loss; retarding the build-up of populations of leaf rollers, mainly of Adoxophyes orana by using two treatments per year. The population density of Zetzellia mall and Phytoseiidae species increase and they are able to regulate the population dynamics of tetranychid mites. The parasitoids the leaf rollers and leaf miners can immigrate in the IPM plot, and in the orchard their population density Increase. The population density of aphids (Dysaphis devecta, D. plantaginea, Aphis pomi) is regularly high in the IPM orchards, therefore we have to use every year pirimicarb against them. From the secondary pests Anthonomus pomorum and Stephanitis pyri multiplied in the orchard.