Going beyond sprays and killing agents: Exclusion, sterilization and disruption for insect pest control in pome and stone fruit orchards

- Exclusion, sterilisation and disruption offer a different paradigm in pest management.
- Exclusion (netting) can be used in the most diverse settings.
- Sterile insect release (SIT) is the most selective but also costly.
- Mating disruption is the easiest to implement at the farm level.

Because of their perennial nature, orchards harbor one of the most complex ecosystems in agriculture. Nevertheless, crop protection programs still mainly focus on pesticides (synthetic or organic-approved) to prevent or limit the action of so-called noxious species in these systems. Killing agents represent the dominant paradigm and have been used in agriculture for decades. This paper synthesizes the available literature about the other approaches, more suited to organic farming, which recognize that the radicalness of killing is not necessary to prevent crop losses. Exclusion barriers represent one of the most readily available means of protecting the crop that way, but other behavior-based techniques have been developed, such as sterile insect technique and mating disruption. While there are many other possibilities, these are the three approaches that are currently getting the most interest in tree fruit production, due to ecological and agronomical characteristics, some of which will be detailed in this review.