With the plethora of pesticides out there, it can be challenging to know which will actually work an which wont. Many blogs and websites suggest different home remedies or natural products, but how can you know whether what the blogs are saying are reliable?
I always recommend looking for resources that end in .edu and .gov, as they tend to do a good job at having low bias and provide information based on data from published experiments. The only problem is, the results from these published experiments are often a bit more complicated than the short and easy answer provided to the public. Additionally problematic is the fact that these publications are typically inaccessible, either due to a paywall (i.e. cost money if you’re not a part of a subscribing institution) or in language. A lot of scientific literature is filled with methods, protocols, acronyms, and techniques that are specialized to their field, making comprehension challenging for a person not specialized in the field.
Fortunately there’s a popular simpler publication that has become open-access more recently, making it free to everyone: Arthropod Management Tests.
Arthropod Management Tests is a journal mainly dedicated to simple and concise pesticide trial studies, where a specific pest on a particular crop is chosen, and data is collected to determine how well the pesticide works to suppress the pest. The articles are rather short (1 – 2 pages) and use minimal scientific jargon, making them relatively easy to digest for people that are not specialized in the field. I highly recommend checking these articles out, especially as a grower or homeowner trying to determine what types of pesticides may work in their situation.
For a short tutorial on how to navigate and understand articles published in Arthropod Management Tests, check out this video:
Great article! Well said