Trap Cropping

Trap cropping is a companion-planting pest management technique built around a trap crop, a plant that attracts agricultural pests, usually insects, away from a nearby harvested crop, protecting the main crop from damage while reducing the use of artificial pesticides. While trap crops have succeeded in small-scale settings, larger commercial adoption remains limited: a 2006 review found only 10 successful examples at commercial scale out of 100 cases studied, and every successful case combined trap cropping with additional management strategies to keep insects from dispersing back into the primary crop. Effective trap cropping may require dedicating up to about 30 percent of a field to the trap plants, which makes the strategy economically difficult for growers unwilling to give up that much land to unharvested vegetation.