Sanitation Improves Stored Product Insect Pest Management

There is a large suite of insects that attack anthropogenic agricultural goods after harvest. Proper sanitation programs for food facilities are now recognized as the foundation of good integrated pest management (IPM) programs for stored products throughout the post-harvest supply chain. While good sanitation programs are generally thought to reduce the abundance and diversity of insects, there has been less appreciation of the manifold ways that sanitation interacts with a range of other IPM tactics to modulate their efficacy. Here, we review the literature on how the effectiveness of chemical, physical/cultural, biological, and behaviorally-based control tactics varies with changes in sanitation. In addition, we discuss how sanitation may affect ongoing pheromone- and kairomone-based monitoring programs. Where possible, we quantitatively compile and analyze the impact of sanitation on the fold-change in the efficacy of IPM tactics. We found that decreased sanitation negatively affected the efficacy of most tactics examined, with a mean 1.3–17-fold decrease in efficacy under poorer sanitation compared to better sanitation. Sanitation had neutral or mixed impacts on a few tactics as well. Overall, the literature suggests that sanitation should be of the utmost importance for food facility managers concerned about the efficacy of a wide range of management tactics.