ABSTRACT
The goal of cultural control is to reduce pest populations to levels sufficiently low to prevent economic damage by the use of appropriate cultural practices. The cultural control method possesses certain advantages as well as disadvantages over other control methods. Diversification of the agroecosystems will determine to a large extent the options available for designing cultural control strategies based on the pest's biology and ecology. In 1971, a 3-year experiment was initiated at the Yuma Station to determine the effects of various irrigation termination dates and levels of pink bollworm control on cotton yields and overwintering pink bollworm populations as measured by sping moth emergence. It should be emphasized that cultural control, like biological control and other pest management tactics, is a population lowering procedure. This may require a re-education of the grower so that he understands the concept of living with continuous pest populations but at levels sufficiently low that economic damage is unlikely.
