Mealybugs are a major pest for many crops (such as the vegetable Cassava, in Thailand). An environmentally-friendly bio-control method is implemented using an introduced predator (green lacewings) of the mealybugs to mitigate plant damage. This is analyzed so as to devise and determine an optimal strategy for control of the mealybug population. A predator-prey model has been proposed and analyzed to study the effect of the biological control of the spread of the mealybugs in the plant field.

more »

... behaviour of the system in terms of stability, phase space and bifurcation diagrams are considered. The results obtained from different numbers of predators being released are compared. In particular we obtain thresholds of introduced-predator level above which the prey is driven to extinction. Future models will include age-structured multi-compartments for both the prey and predator populations.