Plant Protection and Integrated Pest, Disease and Weed Management
What this domain tests
Domain 6 tests the IPM hierarchy and your command of the permitted plant protection toolbox: which substances are allowed, at what dose, and for which Cypriot pest. Questions are commonly scenario-based - a pest is described, you propose a programme and justify it.
The hierarchy (in this order)
- Prevention: resistant/tolerant varieties, certified clean planting material, rotation, balanced nutrition, sanitation, pruning and removal of infected wood, nets, mulching, solarisation.
- Monitoring: pheromone and yellow sticky traps, visual counts, degree-day models, thresholds - never spray on a calendar alone.
- Mechanical/physical: mass trapping, mating disruption, kaolin particle film, hand removal, weed cultivation.
- Biological: Bacillus thuringiensis (Tuta absoluta, caterpillars), Trichoderma and Coniothyrium against soil and wood pathogens, Beauveria bassiana, Encarsia/Phytoseiulus in protected crops, spinosad in bait form against olive fly and medfly.
- Permitted substances only: copper (max 4 kg/ha/year), sulphur, potassium bicarbonate, plant oils, pyrethrins, azadirachtin, ferric phosphate against snails, basic substances. Prohibited: glyphosate, synthetic pyrethroids, neonicotinoids, rotenone.
Weeds
Stale/false seedbed, blind cultivation, inter-row tilling, mulching, flaming, mowing, dense cover crops and grazing - mechanical control first, with the aim of preventing seed set.
Worked example
Olive fruit fly (δάκος, Bactrocera oleae) in a certified grove. Reasoning: hang 2–4 yellow or pheromone traps per hectare from June and check weekly. When weekly catches rise, apply a bait spray - spinosad plus hydrolysed protein, coarse droplets on a small patch of canopy per tree - rather than a full cover spray: it protects beneficiaries and stays inside the permitted list. Copper for olive knot/leaf spot is budgeted separately against the 4 kg/ha/year cap. If pressure is severe, bring the harvest forward and never leave fruit on the tree or on the ground, because that is where the population overwinters.
Traps that cost marks
- Exceeding the copper cap by counting only the "main" spray and forgetting seed treatment or autumn applications.
- Spraying sulphur or copper in the heat of the day or during bloom (bee toxicity, leaf burn).
- Assuming a permitted product needs no PPE or no pre-harvest interval.
- Spraying a buffer zone next to a watercourse or during wind drift conditions.