Sanitation is absolutely the key to controlling pest problems in growth
chambers. We have an absolute prohibition on the use of pesticides in
growth chambers because they tend not to break down on the internal
surfaces. That creates several significant problems for later users. (The
plants can be sprayed outside the chambers and returned if they pass
insect inspection.)
In addition to cleaning the accessible areas with bleach, or a safer
sanitiser like Physan, it is helpful to run the chamber at 40 degrees for
3-4 days. With cool outdoor temperatures, that runs the humidity way down
and provides a double stress that seems to knock out any "propagules" that
we missed.
taguebwREMOVE at wfu.edu wrote:
> I would second Jon's solution -- for a large scale aphid infestation in a
> green house full of arabidopsis, we harvested what we could, bleached
> everything and waited a bit. None of the insecticides we tried killed
> aphids while saving arabidopsis.
>monroejd at jmu.edu ("J. Monroe") wrote:
> > This may not be what you are looking for, but when we had aphids I
> > threw out all of the plants, scrubbed down the room with dilute
> > bleach and waited a week or so before replanting.
Bob Wise wrote:
> > >Our growth chamber has caught a disease, namely aphids. Does anyone have a
> > >procedure for de-aphiding a 16 ft^3 growth chamber?
--
Thomas Björkman
Dept. of Horticultural Sciences
Cornell University
