Keywords :

Anti-insect netting tailored for protecting vegetable crops in the tropics

In tropical regions, vegetable crops are infested year-round by a broad range of pests. Farmers generally deal with this problem by spraying pesticides. Although farmers, through such unplanned and uncontrolled chemical treatments, may sometimes be able to turn a profit, the residues remaining on the vegetables are a threat to consumer health, and there is a high groundwater pollution risk. It is now crucial to develop alternative pest management methods that are less dependent on chemical inputs. In Benin, the mosquito netting principle was adapted for the protection of cabbage crops—plastic netting placed over the crop late in the day thus kept pests (mainly nocturnal) from reaching the plants to feed and lay their eggs.

This economically viable and sustainable technique, which is also easy for horticultural farmers to understand and implement, reduced the number of pesticide treatments by tenfold, while increasing production. Physical control is proving well suited to small farms that employ family labour. This technology was developed through a participatory approach involving all stakeholders in this commodity chain. The physical control conditions and concomitant modifications in cropping practices have been defined within the framework of a prototyping initiative that takes cropping system constraints identified during a preliminary assessment into account. Extension of the use of anti-insect netting for agricultural applications also provides an opportunity to recycle mosquito netting used in malaria control programmes. Moreover, the use of anti-insect netting will be studied for other vegetable crops such as tomato and leafy vegetables, while also combining this technique with other alternative pest and disease control methods.