What Is an Integrated Pest Management Plan for Indoor Cannabis Grows?

The cannabis industry is built on the idea of creating positive change. From policy changes and community improvement to future-facing growing solutions, cannabis professionals bring innovation to every corner of the industry. Cannabis cultivation technology is evolving, too. 

Chorus specializes in providing cultivators with innovative solutions to maintain healthier grow rooms and higher-quality crops through pathogen control and pest management. 

Integrated Pest Management Plan Basics: What is IPM?

Integrated pest management, or IPM, is a type of pest control methodology that considers organisms harmful to humans or human concerns’ life cycles and the environments in which they thrive. Using this information, IPM empowers cultivators to create environments that discourage pest proliferation and pathogen growth. 

IPM strongly emphasizes cost-effectiveness and environmental impact, seeking the most economical and safe solutions to common pest problems. 

Additionally, IPM embraces prevention over removing pests once they are present, resulting in a more minimal impact on plants, workers, and the environment. 

Why an Integrated Pest Management Plan Matters for Cannabis Cultivators

IPM is an excellent choice to fulfill the unique needs of cannabis cultivators to maximize high-quality yields. 

Price is often the key consideration for cannabis cultivators; the sector typically operates on low margins, and saving money wherever possible is essential to continued success. IPM emphasizes economical methods and continuous pest prevention rather than outright treatment, ensuring predictably low costs compared to other pest-control strategies. 

Finally, cannabis products are meant to be consumed and enjoyed on every sensory level; consumers pay for top-shelf flavors and aromas. As such, it’s important to use pest-control techniques that have a minimal effect on the finished products. IPM emphasizes safe, non-toxic pest control methods to ensure a negligible impact on the taste, smell, and safety profile of the mature cannabis plants. This focus on safety is especially critical in medical cannabis cultivation. 

Key Components of an Effective IPM Cannabis Strategy

IPM can seem more complicated than traditional pest-control methods; it requires more than just routinely spraying plants with noxious pesticides and fungicides. While this can make IPM seem intimidating initially, once you get started, this flexibility and utilization of unconventional methods become its greatest strengths. 

Proactive Pest Monitoring in Cannabis Cultivation

The central principles of IPM are monitoring for pests and creating inhospitable environments for those that can harm crops, like powdery mildew and other types of mold.

For an effective IPM strategy, cultivators need to proactively control for pests and pathogens through ongoing methods like entry and exit protocols, routine sanitization of surfaces and tools, and maintenance of air quality.

Understanding What Species of Powdery Mildew Attacks Cannabis Plants

There are more than 800 cataloged species of powdery mildew. Most plants are only susceptible to one or two of these species. 

Hemp and cannabis can be impacted by Golovinomyces ambrosiae and Podosphaera macularis, though there may be more.

Implementing IPM to Prevent Powdery Mildew and Pathogen Growth

Though there are only two known types of powdery mildew that affect cannabis plants, they can severely impact the quality and quantity of flower that a crop can produce. Cannabis cultivators must control this common pathogen.

Powdery mildew is incredibly difficult to get rid of once it appears. Luckily, IPM strategies can help minimize its spread and even keep it from appearing in the first place.

IPM for Cannabis: Tools and Techniques for Success

Cannabis cultivators can leverage many different IPM techniques to manage, control, and minimize the presence of pests and pathogens in their grow rooms. 

• Entry and Exit Protocols. Maintaining strict cleanliness standards for workers entering and exiting indoor grow rooms can help to prevent the introduction of germs and the spread of pathogens. 
• Maintaining a Consistent Grow Room Environment. Temperature and humidity fluctuations create the ideal environment for powdery mildew to grow. An air quality monitoring system can help maintain consistent temperature, humidity, and airflow to create and sustain an inhospitable environment for pests.
• Regular Cleaning and Disinfection: Consistently sanitizing grow room surfaces and tools can help minimize the spread of pests and pathogens by removing bacteria.
• Air Sanitization Technology. Many pests and pathogens, including powdery mildew, spread through the air. Clean air is essential to IPM and critical for growing healthy cannabis plants.

Creating a Customized Integrated Pest Management Plan for Your Grow Room

Integrated pest management is the best way to ensure a cost-effective, healthy, and pest- and pathogen-free cannabis cultivation facility. 

Chorus creates and maintains healthier indoor spaces in cannabis cultivation facilities. Our innovative products are designed to complete any cannabis IPM strategy. Contact us today to learn more about our technology and discover how to get Chorus into your grow rooms.