An Evaluation of Companion Planting and Botanical Extracts as Alternative Pest Controls for the Colorado Potato Beetle
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Public concern related to pesticides and genetically modified foods has prompted a rise of consumer interest in organically produced foods. Currently, organic agriculture is the fastest growing sector of the agriculture industry. Potatoes are an important vegetable crop in Canada and are subject to attack by many pests. In particular, the Colorado potato beetle (CPB), Leptinotursa decemlineata (Say), is one of the most important defoliator pests of potatoes in Canada. Field experiments were conducted for two growing seasons in Nova Scotia, Canada. The objective of the trials was to evaluate companion planting and the spraying of botanical extracts as alternative pest controls for the CPB. Bush beans, flax, French marigold, horseradish and tansy were tested as companion plants to potatoes; in addition, a capsaicin extract (Hot Pepper Wax™), a garlic extract (Garlic Barrier AG®), a neem seed extract (Neemix 4.5®), a Bacillus thuringiensis product (Novado® Biological Insecticide) and a pine extract (Vapor Gard®) were evaluated as insect control sprays. Results from these trials indicated that potatoes sprayed with a 2% concentration of the neem extract had lower beetle densities, lower potato defoliation and higher yields than the control plots and the other treatments evaluated. Novador® was also an effective control against CPB attack; however, not as effective as the neem extract. Companion planting and garlic and capsaicin extracts did not reduce the densities of CPBs on potatoes; rather, some of the companion plants increased the incidence of CPB attack. Overall, a review of the results from this study raised concerns about using companion plants without first verifying their efficacy.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".