Contribuição da vegetação espontânea no manejo de insetos benéficos em agroecossistemas

Abstract

A set of alternatives for insect agroecological management has been developed, incorporating techniques that maintain and expand biodiversity in agroecosystems. In this sphere, we highlight the maintenance of spontaneous vegetation in cultivated areas to increase the beneficial insect population. The present research aimed to identify and contextualize the use of spontaneous vegetation in the management of agroecosystems by ecologically-based farmers, as well as to verify the perception of these farmers about the importance of insects and their interaction with spontaneous vegetation. Thus, combining the research elements with data from experimental research to legitimize the use of spontaneous vegetation as a strategy for conservation of entomofauna diversity in cabbage cultivation. For this, the ethnobotanical research was carried out with 25 key ecological informants linked to the Southern Ecological Cooperative and ARPA-Sul. besides the difficulty of identifying the insects present in agroecosystems. Thus, the experimental research investigated the contribution of spontaneous vegetation to conservative biological control in cabbage cultivation by surveying the entomofauna present in cabbage cultivation with different spontaneous vegetation management: cabbage with constant presence of spontaneous vegetation between rows, cabbage without spontaneous vegetation, cabbage with weeding every 21 days and selective weeding - maintenance of caruru plants. The spontaneous vegetation had a positive effect on conservation of beneficial entomofauna in cabbage cultivation, especially the caruru plants, without affecting the production, besides being smaller the aphid population. Thus, the maintenance of caruru plants is recommended as a strategy to increase the beneficial insect population and thus contribute to conservative biological control.