Semi-field & Field Studies

Where laboratory and extended laboratory tests fail to demonstrate an acceptable level of environmental safety, it may be necessary to test a product under field conditions. Mambo-Tox also has extensive experience with:

• Semi-field bioassays using a variety of model crop systems, such as cereals, beans, apple trees and vines. Test designs can incorporate multiple product applications or can simulate spray programmes using multiple application factors (MAF). We have a wide selection of confinement cages (large and small) that can be used for semi-field studies.
  
  
• Field trials in which sampling programmes are carried out to determine the impact of a test item on the natural arthropod fauna. We have extensive experience of such trials in both arable crops (cereals, oilseed rape and maize) and in orchards. A range of sampling techniques is available to monitor numbers of the key groups of arthropods pre- and post-treatment. Sampling methods (e.g. pitfall traps, suction samplers, sticky traps, sweep netting, fogging) are tailored to the arthropod guilds considered to be of greatest interest in a particular crop.