Exploring the Role of Supplemental Foods for Improved Greenhouse Biological Control

Abstract

Small modifications in greenhouse agroenvironments can have a big impact on the success of biological control programs. For instance, the application of supplemental foods during and after the release of natural enemies onto crop plants, could considerably improve their long-Term reproductive and population growth prospects. As such, food supplementation represents a valuable biological control supportive strategy, helping to grow natural enemy populations before pest establishment, akin to creating a standing-Army to defend crops against future pest invasions. In many places of the world, food supplementation represents a relatively new but growing component or biological control research, with increasingly better resources available to guide producers, IPM practitioners, or researchers wanting to apply or optimize such strategies to their local agents and environments. In this review, we summarize the current stage of knowledge associated with various supplemental food types, which work best to support specific beneficial arthropods as well as some tools and techniques for successfully applying this biological control-enhancing strategy. We also summarize some current challenges to the use of supplemental foods and discuss what future research is needed to adapt and optimize food supplementation for a diversity of natural enemy species.