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Disease & Pest Control
Passive Pest Control
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Certified organic producers are permitted to use some ‘naturally occurring’ substances, such as sulphur and copper, pyrethrum, neem and even newer products such as the biological caterpillar control, Bacillus thuringiensis (sold under various brand names such as Dipel® or Novasol®). Because even these natural chemicals may be toxic to other life, organic producers use even these tools carefully and as a last resort.

Most organic growers use (and sometimes overuse) sulphur for powdery and sulphur and copper for downy mildew. These substances readily achieve disease control in some areas, if the basic requirements of the vine have been provided.

Some alternatives are very simple, such as milk sprays for powdery mildew, and some may be high tech, such as Tricodex, for example, which is an Israeli made biological control for Botrytis. Some organic producers use home made products such as Casuarina tea or biodynamic preparations such as 501.

Light spraying oils (white oil) are also permitted for disease and pest control.

Organic growers may not use genetically engineered organisms, but otherwise generally adopt the best practice biological control options for their industry and location.

Passive Pest Control

Organic growers train themselves to accept some level of pest attack and apply the concept of a damage threshold before any treatments. Apart from the economic wisdom of this strategy organic growers understand that you cannot have a biological control without a pest presence.

Sometimes the beneficial insect (ladybird, lacewing, parasitic wasp etc) will not reach effective control numbers until the pest population has built up. If growers reach for the spray tools too early, they may never know what would have happened had they done nothing.

Environmental enhancement is a means of manipulating the general environment of the vineyard to encourage natural predators. It can include management of the under-vine and inter-row ground cover or of windbreaks and other ‘non-productive’ areas, to ensure that shelter and food are available for beneficial organisms. It is especially important for many insects (parasitic wasps, hoverflies etc.) that flowering plants are available during the full length of the growing season, as the adults of these species often feed on pollen and nectar. They fly into the crop to lay eggs that hatch into the parasitic larvae. There are now commercially available cover-crop seed mixes that are designed to bring nectar sources into the inter-row area.