Greenhouses and nurseries are filled with potted, bedding, and garden plants that can attract a diverse array of insect life. In closed ecosystems, insects like whiteflies, thrips, or aphids spread quickly and can cause a lot of damage to your plants.
Solving these problems calls for an insect management strategy that not only addresses existing threats, but also prevents target insects from repopulating. Planning to handle both immediate and long-term issues will protect your healthy plants from damaging insects.
Why Add an IGR to the Mix?
Let's start with the basics: what is an Insect Growth Regulator (IGR) and why is it a vital addition to your pest management strategy?
- An IGR breaks the insect's life cycle, helping to disrupt an insect population's ability to reproduce.
- While insecticides, or adulticides, are effective for targeting the visible insect threat, we often only see and treat a portion of the population. Established insect populations can quickly and easily regenerate.
- An IGR applied with an adulticide eradicates the visible, immediate threat, and helps achieve long-term control simultaneously by impacting reproduction.
A Targeted Solution to Fight Insect Resistance
Growing healthy greenhouse and nursery plants comes with enough challenges. Selecting a targeted solution for insect control doesn't have to be one of them. Enstar® AQ Insect Growth Regulator, from Central Life Sciences is a water-based product formulated specifically to fight greenhouse and nursery insect threats:
- Enstar® AQ prevents the development of target insect larvae into adults. See label rates for both preventive and curative programs for insect control.
- Enstar® AQ is for use on ornamental plants in greenhouses, shadehouses, lath houses, and interiorscapes (i.e. atriums).
- Enstar® AQ features broad-spectrum, long-residual control of whiteflies, thrips, aphids, soft-bodied and armored scales, mealybugs, leaf miners, glassy-winged sharpshooters, and fungus gnats.
How to Apply Enstar® AQ
- Although Enstar® AQ has been tested on a wide variety of poinsettias and other plant species with low or no signs of phytotoxicity, it is advisable to test on a small sample for observation prior to treating an entire crop.
- Complete foliage coverage is necessary for effective pest control.
- With conventional spray equipment, mix the recommended amount of Enstar® AQ product and water.
- Spray both the top and bottom of leaves, until runoff occurs. For other applications of Enstar® AQ, follow the equipment manufacturer's specifications.
- Use Enstar® AQ alone or in conjunction with Mavrik Aquaflow® Insecticide/Miticide for broad-spectrum control.
Enstar® AQ is formulated to provide growers with an effective Insect Growth Regulator (IGR) that prevents the long-term damages caused by insects while being gentle on plants and beneficials.
