International Pest Control – January/February 2018 – Vol 60, Nr.1

IPCadmin | February 22, 2018

Cover image: Larva and adult of Musca domestica drawn by Amedeo John Engel Terzi. Born in 1872 in Palermo, Italy, Terzi travelled to England after the turn of the century and after a short stint at the London School of Tropical Medicine, he joined the Natural History Museum. He produced numerous illustrations (he estimated 37,000) mostly of parasitic insects, including a variety of Diptera (Flies). He died in 1956, two years before IPC was first published, at the age of 84, leaving an important and lasting legacy to the science of entomology and research into the transmission of disease. Source Natural History Museum, London, UK.

Welcome to 2018. This year, International Pest Control magazine is celebrating 60 years in print. It is an honour to be responsible for editing a publication that was first produced before I was born and that I remember reading as a student. In December, I was pleased to have overseen my 30th issue and ‘celebrated’ my 5th year as Editor. Technology has of course, developed rapidly in 60 years. IPC was originally a black and white, text only document. Now that we are deep into the digital age, IPC can be read as an on-line publication (for subscribers) and as the traditional hard copy. We work hard irrespective of the medium used, to ensure the content is interesting and relevant.

Whilst continuing to produce our normal selection of news, views and reviews, we aim to commemorate our industry’s history over the next six issues and to draw upon experiences from within the pest management world, to help illustrate how far pest control has come and how we reached where we are today. We start in this issue with our Technical Consultant Graham Matthews drawing on his early memories of field trips to Africa.

Our special feature this issue is Fly Management, in which we consider the past and present for a variety of these two-winged pests. We include the latest research into fruit flies large and small, with an update of Drosophila suzukii that threatens the global fruit industry and a look by Russell IPM into their development of attract and kill fruit fly control strategies. Brandenburg reflects on nuisance fly species and the history of fly control while Partho takes us to the rural Philippines, to look at fly control in poultry farms. Finally, I reflect on the birth of a fly control products manufacturer, drawing from my own personal experience.

In January this year, the European public health industry met up at Bremen, in Germany, at Pest Protect and we will bring you the review in our next issue. In this issue, in public health, we discover how wild dogs are posing problems in France and Rentokil explains how climate change is creating a global pest problem. The global response to malaria is at crossroads, as malaria still infects over 200m people and kills over 440 thousand each year. The Worlds Malaria Report is now available to read.

Monitoring for pests is a key first step in any pest management strategy and pheromones play a key role in this process. Most dispensers remain very traditional but one company, GEA has invested in a novel format – a pheromone dispenser patch. We look at some early trials. Meanwhile Harper Adams explains how they are improved forecasting for potato cyst nematode.

In agriculture, our Technical Consultant Terry draws on his own personal experiences to look at the evolutionary development of contact protectant and systemic curative fungicides. Invasive pests raise their head again and CABI explain how they plan to improve farming for 50 million poor households by tackling invasive species, while in our Forestry and Plantation section, we consider the well-established situation with squirrels and two new comers, Canker Stain of Plane and Oriental Chestnut Gall Wasp.

If you have had a long career in pest management, or work for an established enterprise, we would be pleased to hear from you with your memories and observations – past and present. Please do get in touch, as your story may well end up in a future issue of IPC.