VEGETABLE CROPS

Consumers would like to have organically grown vegetables, but with continuous cropping of many types of vegetables crops so that supplies can be maintained to markets over long periods, the incidence of pests and diseases will inevitably increase and cause some damage. Some of this damage may be relatively minor, but will affect the cosmetic appearance of the produce being marketed. Some vegetables are grown on a large field scale, while others are grown close together in relatively small areas, but in each case growers often have difficulty in rotating crops sufficiently to minimise soil pests, such as nematodes. These problems make it difficult to develop pest management programmes without the use of some pesticides. Thus, as with other crops, the aim is to select as far as possible cultivars resistant to pests and diseases and to minimise the need for pesticide treatment by careful regular crop monitoring, and use of weather forecasting and prediction models…