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Integrated Pest Management
Edward B. Radcliffe, William D. Hutchison, Rafael E. Cancelado (Eds)
Cambridge University Press
2009; 529 pages
ISBN-13:9780521699310
$63.00 (paper)
This comprehensive IPM book, with its emphasis on insect pest management, is a
good choice for those professors looking for a textbook for an undergraduate or
first graduate-level course on IPM. It consists of 40 chapters written by a
variety of experts. Almost all chapters are well-written in a style that will
engage the students and motivate them to read more. The publisher and editors
have produced a generally well-designed book that is comfortable to read.
The editors chose topics that all students could benefit from learning. In
other words, the emphasis is on concepts, techniques, and tactics that we all
should understand, rather than a set of case studies emphasizing system details
(although nine chapters do focus on particular pest systems). For instance, one
chapter focuses on a field crop (cotton). Because there is so much information
about field-crop IPM on the Internet, including the editors’ IPMWORLD Web site,
adding more chapters concerning field crops would be redundant. All the chapters
in the book include a long list of references cited.
The editors should be credited with including many topics that are not
biological. More than 25% of the chapters have little to do with biology.
Governmental regulation, economics, decision making, sociology, and farm
operations are some of the subjects that are addressed in this book, as they
should be in any proper summary of IPM in the real world. One of the goals of
the editors was to help students understand why IPM is not implemented more than
it has been. I was disappointed that several chapters emphasizing sampling and
decision making failed to mention the cost of sampling as an important factor to
consider in IPM.
The book is not perfect. The index, for instance, should be expanded and
improved. Terms such as sanitation and repellant cannot be found in the index.
Furthermore, there are several cases in which a term in the index does not refer
to all the pages on which the term is used. Better cross-referencing of topics
covered in multiple chapters is needed. I believe that this is particularly
important for students.
The book is published without color, which I think is fine; it certainly keeps
the cost down. However, I urge the editors to include more line drawings and
typical statistical plots in the next edition. Some chapters had no figures. I
believe that the editors could easily draw up a list of good figures for the
majority of chapters that have one or no figures. For example, Chapter 28
describes aphids as vectors of plant disease, but no life cycle diagrams or
images of disease transmission are included in the text. Some chapters are too
short for the subjects that they address and some of these would be improved by
including one or two case studies to clarify and support the “take-home”
messages of the chapters.
This is a very good book that should be used in many IPM courses. Its strengths
are in the diversity of topics that represents the breadth of IPM. I am pleased
that several chapters directly discuss economics and two others describe the
value of ecosystem or landscape design for IPM. Too often we focus on the
control options that require us to modify seasonal and weekly inputs, rather
than the design options that permit us to adjust the structure of the landscape
to make IPM more effective. Thus, I feel that this book is a great foundation
for teaching modern IPM.
David Onstad
Department of Crop Sciences
University of Illinois
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