Control methods compared
| Medium | Pros | Cons | Cost, dates |
|---|---|---|---|
| Contact fungicides (copper, Bordeaux mixture since the 1880s) | Preventive, inexpensive, permitted in organic; effective below 10% inoculum | Washed off by rain, 3-5 passes a year, Bordeaux mixture judged poorly effective; antagonism with systemics in mixtures | Barat 1955: 6-10 hl/ha per pass; Brazil: 4-5 passes at 30 days |
| Systemic and mesostemic fungicides (triazoles, 1970s; strobilurins, 1990s) | Curative, act on the infection in progress, fewer passes | Cost, possible resistance, not permitted in organic; gradual withdrawal of molecules (chlorpyrifos on the insecticide side, EU MRL 0.01 mg/kg in 2020) | 60% of the products registered in Brazil; a permanent cost line that decides who carries on |
| Resistant varieties (Kent 1911, S.795 1946, Catimor 1959, Colombia 1982, Ruiru 11 1985, Castillo 2005, F1 2010-2019) | Continuous protection without spraying; the only response at the scale of a country | Overcome in 10 to 40 years (Lempira 2017, Catimor in Peru 2024); cup penalty linked to introgression; replanting = 3 years without harvest; F1 to be cloned | Starmaya seed ~$0.07, half the cost of an embryogenesis plantlet; 30-year breeding cycle, WCR target 8 years |
| Biological control (Prorops nasuta and Beauveria described in 1955; Lecanicillium since the 1980s) | Organic-compatible, preserves beneficial insects; Beauveria infects 30-40% of berry borers; birds: −50% | Efficacy varies with humidity and temperature, high cost (Beauveria), Lecanicillium never convincing in the field | Hawaii 2011-2021: $52M of benefits from Beauveria alone |
| Cultural control (shade, pruning, fertilization, hygiene, picking up berries, wound disinfection, stump removal, grafting onto canephora) | Residue-free, acts on all three sides of the triangle; picking up fallen berries = basis of berry borer control; grafting = the only response to nematodes | Very labor-intensive (100 trees/man/day for borers; 3 months of berry collection); effects of shade contradictory depending on context | Vayssière 1955; UCDA 2019; CATIE 2019 (rust manual) |
| Traps and thresholds (5 bugs/tree 1955; Brocap 1990s; 30 trees Hawaii 2012; ExpeRoya 2022) | Treat only when the pest costs more than the treatment; monitoring of flights and foci | Traps mainly indicators (mass trapping limited); thresholds poorly established for the leaf miner; recent and local models | 15 traps/ha, 75% ethanol; contact fungicide below 5% incidence, systemic above (Brazil) |
| Eradication and quarantine | Only total victory: Puerto Rico 1903; CBD still absent from the Americas | Requires an island, a focus caught early and an authority; Brazilian barrier breached within a year (1971) | McCook 2019 |
The principle of integrated pest management, spread through world agriculture from the 1960s in reaction to calendar-based spraying, fits in one sentence: one does not treat because a pest is present, but because it exceeds the level at which it costs more than the treatment, and one preserves the beneficial insects that do most of the work for free. Vayssière's protocol of five trees and five bugs (1955) is a complete formulation of it, seven years before the concept had a name.
All the clean methods rest on arms: picking up by hand all the fallen berries for three months, counting insects on a cloth, puttying a hundred trees a day, disinfecting every pruning wound, removing the stumps of a plot. Coste records without comment that governments closed schools during the harvest to free up child labor. Chemistry claimed to settle the labor question; integrated pest management returns to it, and each time asks who makes the gesture, at what price and at what age.
The choice of a variety, notes a professional training document, comes down to three motivations: yield, resistance to a disease and cup quality; these three are rarely compatible, and that is the whole subject of the plate.
Coste 1955, p. 245-251 and 321; professional training document, “Caféiculture” (p. 6); LC ch. 15In this plateThe 19 sections
- 01The disease triangle
- 02Fungi, spores, obligate parasites
- 03Orange rust: biology and cycle
- 04Ceylon, 1869-1890: the birth of plant pathology
- 05A fungus's world tour, 1872-2020
- 06Races, SH genes and the Oeiras catalog
- 07Resistance: Kent, S.795, the Timor Hybrid and its descendants
- 08The great coffee leaf rust of 2008-2013, country by country
- 09Milder nights
- 10The erosion of resistance, 2017-2024
- 11Diagnosis, surveillance and warning
- 12The coffee berry borer, the chief enemy
- 13Coffee wilt disease: from the Ubangi to Uganda
- 14Coffee berry disease, Kenya 1922 and 1971
- 15Nematodes, bugs, leaf miners, scale insects, borers
- 16Diseases of soil, of fruit, and what is not alive
- 17The pharmacopoeia of yesterday and today
- 18Control methods compared
- 19Today: 2023-2026
The table of contents, with the first sentence of each section