Combating thrips with biological controls:
Predator: Neoseiulus cucumeris or Amblyseius cucumeris
This is a tan-orange predatory mite. Adult females consume up to 10 thrips per day and have a 30 day life span. They can survive on pollen and spider mites in the absence of thrips. PDI uses these critters to eradicate thrips from your Boston indoor office plants.
Optimal Environment: 70°F min.; moderate RH.
Predatory mites are distributed over the crop weekly or biweekly, or released in convenient breeding units in which several hundred mites reproduce several thousand predatory mites over a six-week period.
Predator: Amblyseius degenerans (Neoseiulus degenerans)
These predatory mites work very well on greenhouse peppers, or other crops with ample pollen. They are able to multiply rapidly and are good searchers of prey. They do not enter a resting phase until December, and survive drier conditions than N. cucumeris.
Optimal Environment: 65-85°F ; 60-85% RH, Presence of pollen
Predator: Orius insidiosus Minute Pirate Bug, Orius sp.
Minute pirate bugs (MPB) are small, predaceous bugs that kill their prey by attacking with their piercing mouthparts and sucking out the body contents. Both adults and nymphs are predaceous. Adults lay eggs beneath the surface of plant tissue, often on stems or near leaf veins. The eggs hatch into small, yellow nymphs that develop into adults in 9-25 days, depending on temperature. Adult Orius can eat 5-20 thrips per day. They can survive on pollen in the absence of prey.
Optimal Environment: 70-90°F, day length 11+ hrs
Predator: Hypoaspis miles
This predatory mite is a scavenger that eats thrips pupae and fungus gnat larvae in the soil. Adults lay eggs in the soil, which hatch in 1-2 days. The nymphs develop into adults in 5-6 days. The mites reproduce quickly, and few are needed to establish an effective population.
IPM Laboratories, Inc. warrants that the biological controls you receive will be alive and healthy when received and will contain the correct number of the species you ordered. However, as with any pest control measure, success cannot be guaranteed. IPM Laboratories, Inc. makes no guarantee, express or implied, as to the effectiveness of these products.
PDIPlants has been a long time user of the above predator mites that biological and safely eradicate Thrips pest in your office plants.