In
agriculture
Agriculture encompasses crop and livestock production, aquaculture, and forestry for food and non-food products. Agriculture was a key factor in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created ...
cultural control is the practice of modifying the growing environment to reduce the prevalence of unwanted
pests. Examples include changing
soil pH
Soil pH is a measure of the acidity or basicity (alkalinity) of a soil. Soil pH is a key characteristic that can be used to make informative analysis both qualitative and quantitatively regarding soil characteristics. pH is defined as the neg ...
or
fertility
Fertility in colloquial terms refers the ability to have offspring. In demographic contexts, fertility refers to the actual production of offspring, rather than the physical capability to reproduce, which is termed fecundity. The fertility rate ...
levels,
irrigation
Irrigation (also referred to as watering of plants) is the practice of applying controlled amounts of water to land to help grow crops, landscape plants, and lawns. Irrigation has been a key aspect of agriculture for over 5,000 years and has bee ...
practices, amount of sunlight, temperature, or the use of beneficial animals (e.g. chickens) or insects (e.g. ladybugs) (biological control). Cultural control can help avoid pest population build-up, strengthen the overall resilience of a farming system and thereby reduce a need for curative interventions e.g., chemical pesticide applications. As such, a systematic implementation of cultural control practices can avert pesticide-induced detrimental effects on farmland biodiversity and the environment. Cultural control can involve the use of crop rotation, resistant varieties, tillage practice, regular weeding, fallowing, uprooting and burning infected crops.
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References
Agriculture
{{Agri-stub