Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T16:10:03.489Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The role of aircraft in the management of insect populations in crops in the year 2000

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2016

G. W. Schaefer*
Affiliation:
Ecological Physics Research Group, Cranfield Institute of Technology

Extract

Although 2000 AD is but 20 years away, even so this is a long period in terms of the rate of recent technological development. My remarks about the possible future state of this subject must therefore be somewhat speculative. The projections will be based, however, on research carried out over the past 10 years, and I hope this will provide an element of usefulness.

I shall refer to both agricultural and forestry crops. Our most extensive agricultural experience has been with cotton and its pests in the Sudan, particularly the cotton bollworm moth; and with cereals in the UK, particularly cereal aphids. Our forestry experience has been with softwoods and the spruce budworm moth in eastern Canada, and with lodge-pole pine forests and the pine beauty moth in Scotland. In terms of techniques our experience has ranged over ground-based and airborne radars, a full range of ground and airborne meteorological instrumentation, the study of insect flight behaviour by sensitive infra-red opto-electronic devices, the turbulent dispersal of spray droplets and their deposition on foliage and insects, the study and quantification of insect population dynamics, and the use of many biological techniques, including suction traps and light traps.

Type
The role of aircraft in an agricultural strategy for the year 2000
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Aeronautical Society 1980 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Schaefer, G. W. Radar studies of insect flight. Chapter 8, Insect Flight, (ed Rainey, ), Blackwell, 1976.Google Scholar
2. Schaefer, G. W. An airborne radar technique for the investigation and control of migrating pest insects. Migrant Pests, (ed Gunn, and Rainey, ), Royal Society, pp 211218, 1979.Google Scholar
3. Greenbank, G., Schaefer, G. W. and Rainey, R. C. Spruce Budworm Moth flight and dispersal; A new understanding from canopy observations, radar and aircraft. Entomological Society of Canada, Memoir No 110, 49 pp, 1980.Google Scholar
4. Schaefer, G. W. and Allsopp, K. Distribution of spray and assessment of larval mortality in the aerial applicaton of fenitrothion to a forest. 1979. (To be published by the Forestry Commission.)Google Scholar
5. Joyce, R. J. V. Insect flight in relation to problems of pest control. Chapter 7, Insect Flight, (ed Rainey, ), Blackwell, 1976.Google Scholar
6. Joyce, R. J. V., (with the editor). The control of migrant pests. Animal Migration, (ed Aidley, ), Cambridge, 1980.Google Scholar
7. Several authors. Migrant Pests, (ed Gunn, and Rainey, ), 1979.Google Scholar
8. Lawson, T. J. and Uk, S. The influence of wind turbulence, crop characteristics and flying height on the dispersal of aerial sprays. Ciba-Geigy (AARU), Cranfield, Beds, 1978.Google Scholar
9. Schaefer, G. W., Bent, G. and Cannon, R. The green invasion. New Scientist, 83, pp 440–1, 1979.Google Scholar
10. Joyce, R. J. V. The evolution of an aerial application system for the control of Desert Locusts. Migrant Pests, (ed Gunn, and Rainey, ), Royal Society, pp 5766, 1979.Google Scholar