IOBC QUALITY CONTROL GUIDELINES

Quality control programmes for natural enemies are being established as a result of an intensive cooperation between researchers and biocontrol practitioners. Quality control guidelines for a number of natural enemies were first drafted at the 7th workshop of the IOBC Global WG on Quality Control of Mass Reared Arthropods in Wageningen, The Netherlands (1991) and were further refined and extended to other species in the framework of an IOBC/EC funded European project. European as well as American producers of natural enemies (represented by IBMA and ANBP, respectively) have now adopted these IOBC guidelines for their product control procedures.

At present, quality control guidelines are available for some 30 beneficial insects and mites. These guidelines refer to product control procedures, not to production or process control. They were designed to be as uniformly as possible so the producers can use them in a standardized manner. The measures should preferably be carried out by the producer after all handling procedures just before shipment.

Guidelines for 30 commercially available arthropod natural enemies have been published in:

van Lenteren, J.C., A. Hale, J.N. Klapwijk, J. van Schelt & S. Steinberg (2003). Guidelines for quality control of commercially produced natural enemies. In: J.C. van Lenteren (ed.), Quality control and production of biological control agents: theory and testing procedures. CAB International, Wallingford, UK, pp. 265-303.

A pdf-file containing guidelines for 18 natural enemies (version 2002) can be downloaded free here.