Long, straight, narrow, juicy, delicately flavoured and green describes one of Britain’s most loved summertime crop — aka the English cucumber. Known as the ‘sweeter one’ in comparison to other cucumber variants grown across the world, the UK’s cucumber begins propagation in February ready to start hitting the supermarket shelves in time for the warmer months.

As the cucumber globally recognised  for not going through the process of being dipped in wax for storage (enabling consumers to eat the whole vegetable including skin) — which is the reason the British cucumber has that differentiating fresh and fragrant flavour — the pressure to defeat detrimental pests is ON.

Are you a UK cucumber grower worried that thrips, spidermites and whitefly are going to affect your cucumber growth this year? Implementing biological control is a successful way to control pest populations in your British cucumbers.

Below, we spoke to our UK Commercial Manager, Caroline Reid, to bring you our three key biological control predators which will ease your pest worries by providing all-season protection for your cucumber crop.

1. AMBLYLINE

Amblyline CRS – Amblyseius cucumeris– Because of a lack of pollen the establishment of A. Cucumeris on a cucumber crop is impossible.  The development of Amblyline CRS by a predecessor of Bioline Agrosciences allowed the application of Amblyseius Cucumeris onto the crop at a very early stage prior to the establishment of thrips.  The Continuous Release of A.cu from the sachets allows constant protection of the crop from thrips.

2. CALIFORNILINE

Californiline sachet – Amblyseius californicus –As above a lack of pollen makes establishment of A. californicus on the crops unlikely so a newly developed release sachet of Californiline allows a build up of these mites on the crop prior to spider mite entry.

3. ENCARLINE

Encarline – Encarsia Formosa – Regular introductions of E. Formosa will aid control of whitefly by having a constant level of wasps in the glasshouse searching for whitefly scales.  As the wasps in Encarline are more efficient in finding the pest than we are they perform a good preventatice role.  Look for whitefly scales which have been parasitized and gone black.