PPS Towards a sustainable cabbage cultivation I

More than 10,500 ha of cabbage is grown in the Netherlands. That is a total of 40% of the area of ​​open field vegetables, making it the largest crop group. Cabbage is very susceptible to pests and diseases, which necessitates the use of crop protection products. This sometimes has undesirable effects, causing more and more substances to be banned or their use severely restricted. This poses problems in the control of pests and diseases and if no action is taken, these problems will only increase in the future.

To tackle this problem, the project "Towards a sustainable cabbage cultivation" was set up at the time; the goal of the DKT project was to eventually get a number of practice-oriented systems / strategies in the field of variety selection, integrated pest management (IPM) from cultivation to harvest and combining GNOs, plant enhancers / biostimulants with sustainable resources and making optimal use of natural enemies and pheromones.

An important focus has been on:

• Natural enemies of thrips (Thrips tabaci). Sticky traps have been used to determine which natural enemies there are and by applying different spraying schedules, the influence of the products on the natural enemies was examined.
• A confusion test with pheromones against the cabbage moth (Plutella xylostella) in collaboration with the University of Amsterdam.
• A head cabbage variety study, aimed at tolerant / resistant varieties.