CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

When the Systemwide Program on Integrated Pest Management (SP-IPM) launched its project for “Sustainable integrated management of whiteflies as pests and vectors of plant viruses in the tropics” (The Tropical Whitefly IPM Project, TWF-IPM), the nature of whitefly problems in the high Andes of Colombia and Ecuador was poorly understood. Anecdotal reports and fragmentary scientific studies, mostly published only in the “grey” literature, suggested that whitefly problems were severe and insecticide misuse widespread in this socially and economically important horticultural area (Chapter 4.1, this volume). The seriousness of the reported situation led partners in the project planning process to establish a sub-project specifically to look at “Whiteflies as pests of annual crops in the highlands of Latin America”. However, at the outset of the project, the species of whiteflies responsible for the problems was uncertain and the role of insecticides and insecticide-resistance in aggravating whitefly-related problems was unclear. The first phase of this project provided, for the first time, an opportunity to survey systematically the main crop production areas of this ecologically complex region and characterize their whitefly problems, both from a biological point of view and in terms of farmers’ perceptions of these problems.