KAGOSHIMA, April 28 ―Yasuo Shimomae, 62, a green pepper grower in the city of Shibushi, Kagoshima Prefecture, has come up with an easy and effective way to release tobacco leaf bugs ―native predators that prey on harmful pests.
The method involves collecting mainly baby tobacco leaf bugs, mixing them with horticultural vermiculite and sprinkling them on green pepper plants.
Since baby bugs don’t fly away to other places, they eat pests specifically on the plants, thus working effectively as natural control, a method that is inexpensive and can be used widely also in organic farming.
Both adult and baby tobacco leaf bugs prey on pests such as whiteflies and thrips.
However, it takes around a month and a half for adult tobacco leaf bugs to settle down on the crops after release. And because they can fly, it has been difficult to make them stay on the south or the sides of greenhouses that get hot, and providing conditions that lead to stable results has been a challenge.
Hence Shimomae focused on using baby tobacco leaf bugs and started by collecting baby bugs from spider flowers and sesame plants which they prefer to settle on.
When the plants are tapped by hand, adult bugs fly away but baby bugs fall on the ground, making it easier to collect them.
To make it easier to sprinkle them, the bugs are put in a bottle containing 10 to 50 milliliters of vermiculite used as an extender. The bottle comes with a cap with small holes so that the amount to sprinkle can be easily adjusted.
Green peppers are grown during winter and Shimomae releases the bugs around October, making sure to sprinkle more than three bugs for every three plants.
It takes roughly an hour or so per 10 ares of crops for Shimomae and his wife to complete sprinkling the bugs.
They release more bugs on plants with serious pest damage. They say they see effects of pest control in about four days.
It costs less than 500 yen to adopt this method. “The method is inexpensive and is extremely effective,” said Shimomae. “After the bugs settle down, we don’t need to use agricultural chemicals for pest control.”
The method can be used not only in greenhouses but also outdoors.
A research team of the green pepper growers’ group of JA Soo Kagoshima, a local agricultural cooperative, in which Shimomae is a member, created a manual on natural pest control including his method to make it widely known. They plan to share it with other green pepper growing regions in Kagoshima Prefecture.
Yasuo Shimomae releases baby tobacco leaf bugs on his green pepper plants in Shibushi, Kagoshima Prefecture.