<h1>Ancient pest control</h1>
Pest control is one of the important links in ancient agricultural production, with a written history of more than 3,000 years. According to Zou Shuwen' statistics, between 722 BC and 2630 AD in 1908, there were 645 insect infestations. Among them, locusts were the most serious, with a total of 455 times, accounting for 70.54% of the total. The second is insect infestation such as borer and (). According to Chen Jiaxuan's special statistics on locust plagues, there were 796 locust plagues between 707 BC and 2642 AD. Due to the vast number of historical records, the number of insect plagues that have not been discovered or recorded in the history books may not be greater than the above numbers. In ancient times, it was popular to say that the insect plague was related to the punishment of personnel by heaven. Influenced by the induction of heaven and man, the people believe that the locust plague is to offend the locust god, and often use the method of worshipping the locust god to eliminate the disaster. This is also one of the negative factors that the locust plague cannot eradicate.
On the contrary, in history, from the guanzi onwards, Wang Chong of the Eastern Han Dynasty and Yao Chong of the Tang Dynasty all advocated that insect pests should be actively prevented and controlled, and opposed the theory of heaven and man induction. Wang Chong's "On Heng and Shang Insects" also correctly pointed out that the occurrence of insect pests is closely related to environmental conditions such as temperature and humidity, which is of great significance in the history of pest control. In terms of prevention and control methods, for thousands of years, farmers have accumulated rich experience in practice, which can be summarized in the three major aspects of agricultural control, drug control and biological control. All three have a long history and a wealth of experience. Agricultural control is the most important measure for the control of pests in ancient times through all aspects of agricultural operations and methods of deep ploughing, weeding, irrigation, crop rotation and stubble rotation, and the use of natural temperature changes. For convenience, some manual control methods are also described here.
From the Shang Zhou to the Warring States period
The Book of Poetry is the earliest book in China to mention pests in the field, and contains 26 species of pests in the three hundred articles. The Daejeon has a chant: "Go to its borers, and its cockroaches". Mao Chuan's explanation is: "Eating heart moth, eating leaf moth, eating root cockroach, eating festival thief". It can be seen that these four pests are not the names of a single pest, but a general term for a group of pests with similar pests. The same poem goes on to say that "Tian Zu has a god, bing () fire". The meaning of fire is very broad, and here it may refer to a phototropic pest such as fire booby trap or burning locusts. During the Warring States period, it was recorded in the "Lü's Spring and Autumn Rendi" that "the five cultivations and five cultivations will be exhausted, and the degree of their deep breeding will be obtained in the yin soil, and the grass will not grow, and there will be no borers." That is, it is not good to sow too early and too late through deep ploughing, and the crops sown have the best yield and quality, but also many insect pests. In the "Lü's Spring and Autumn Audit", it is pointed out: "the hemp of time", "not locusts"; "the time of the grass", "not the worm"; "the wheat of the time", "not () maggots".
Qin and Han Dynasty
The number of recorded insects increased during this period, and the Erya contained more than 60 insect names, more than double the number of insects in the Book of Verses. There were two main measures to control insects taken during this period, one of which was a reward for catching locusts, and civilians could exchange the captured locusts for copper money at the government office. The second is to dig ditches to catch locusts, and Wang Chong's "On Heng Shun Drum Chapter" first describes this method: "Locusts arrive, fly or gather, and the place where they are gathered, the valley and grass are dry. The officials and the people made a barrier, and the list was driven within the barrier, and the locusts accumulated in thousands of axes. Attacking the body of the locust".
During the Southern and Northern Dynasties of the Wei and Jin Dynasties
The most famous agricultural book of this period, the Qi Min Zhi Shu, records many pest control measures, which exceed the previous literature. The book is the first to present the experience of crop rotation in the control of pests and diseases. For example, the hemp chapter points out that "hemp, if you want to get a good land, you don't need the old ruins." The old ruins refer to the continuous cultivation of fields. Because of the "old ruins are a bit of a leaf premature death", he first proposed the use of early maturing varieties of millet (millet) to avoid insect infestation. Of the 86 millet varieties listed in the seeds section, 14 are "early ripening and drought-tolerant", and point out that because they are "early ripening", they can be "insect-free". On the contrary, although the other 10 late-maturing varieties have the advantage of water resistance, "insect infestation is a ruler". Taking advantage of short growth periods to avoid pests is a simple and effective approach. For the storage of edible wheat, the book adopts the method of lynching wheat, that is, the wheat is upside down, thinly spread on the field, set on fire by the wind, and extinguished after the fire starts. The wheat grains treated in this way have lost their germination power and cannot be used as seeds, but they can be stored for a long time without insect infestation for consumption. The book Melon Breeding (Melon) introduces the method of removing ants in melon fields is very simple: "Those who have ants, those with cattle and sheep bones with marrow are placed around the melon family." When the ants are attached, they will be discarded, and if they are abandoned, there will be no ants. The melon planting chapter also mentions a method of preventing and controlling "melon cages": "When the dew fails, the melon vines are scattered under the roots with a staff." In the next day or two, if you return to the soil to cultivate its roots, there will be no insects. "The so-called melon cage may be a viral disease caused by leaf () bites, and it is not known that it is a disease at this time. It's the right thing to start with pest fighting. In addition, the book also introduces methods such as timely logging without insects, as well as the prevention and control of livestock lice.
Sui, Tang, Song and Yuan dynasties
Records of insects from this period are scattered in books such as "Art and Literature Cluster", "Taiping Imperial Records", and miscellaneous records such as "Youyang Miscellaneous Tricks". In addition, further commentaries on the erya interpretation of insects such as the Erya Wing and the Piya, etc. Yao Chong, of the Tang Dynasty, improved the previous method of digging trenches and burying locusts by raising fires next to ditches, burying locusts in ditches only after death, so as not to re-drill them out of the soil. By the time of Emperor Renzong of Song, he had simply hunted adult insects in the past and developed into a simultaneous digging of locust eggs, which greatly improved his efficacy. In 1034, "the locusts in Zizhou, Kaifeng Province, recruited people to dig more than 10,000 stones of locust seeds (i.e., eggs)", and Emperor Renzong gave "rice" to the peasants who participated in the locust digging to encourage them. In the "Nongsang Jijiao", it is said: "The ancient agricultural law, the plough is one swing six, and today's people only know that the plough is deep for the work, and do not know that the detail is the full work." The swing is not enough, the soil is rough and unreal... The roots and soils are not compatible, but there are diseases such as hanging death, insect bites, and dry death." It is believed that the fine rake also has an insect repellent effect. The understanding of the types, life history and control methods of mulberry tree pests has made great progress by the Song and Yuan dynasties. Taking the Sang Tianniu as a convenience, the Nongsang Ji Ji Ji ji said: "Heavenly buffalo ... They all give birth to children along the tree. Its sub-maggots suck the resin of the tree. In the autumn and winter, it grows larger, () eating tree hearts, as big as grubs. By March and April, it turned into a tree pupa but turned into a buffalo. The method of prevention is that "when the bark is eaten in the middle of summer, there will be a wet place of fat flowing along the tree, and three or five inches off the ground, it will be cut with an axe, killing its son, and its harm will be self-destructive." If there is already a tree heart, it is advisable to remove it with a chisel." For mulberry ants, the "Nongsang Jijiao" said that wild silkworms, the method of prevention and control is to rely on the natural vibration when cutting mulberry. In addition, the "Nongsang Jizhi" mentions that the use of mulberry trees and mung beans, black soybeans, sesame seeds and other intercropping can reduce insect pests, but it is not suitable for intercropping with millet and sorghum.
Ming and Qing dynasties
During the Ming and Qing dynasties, there was a surge in literature on insects, including written exhortations, dictionaries, books, chronicles, notes and miscellaneous examinations, etc., and there were insect books, and there were more than ten kinds of locust control books alone. Among them, Xu Guangqi's "Eliminating Locusts" is the most valuable. The nine anti-locust measures contained herein are unprecedented new insights. In addition to following the ditches, eggs, and hunting and killing of the previous generations, the method of controlling locusts also took advantage of the locusts' fear of color and sound waves to create a method of using bamboo poles to flutter red and white cloth, clothes, and skirts to make the locusts dare not stay and to intimidate them with the sound of guns. Grow mung beans, cowpeas, hemp, amaranth, sesame seeds, sweet potatoes, broad beans, peas, lentils, and crops with spicy and foul-smelling flavors on the crop layout. In terms of field crops, the Shen's Agricultural Book proposes a method of cutting grass roots in winter to prevent insect infestations. Thought: "All the insects that damage the seedlings give birth to seeds, and every one is in the foot stall." In the winter ( ) cut the grass roots , add new soil , and also kill insects and protect seedlings. The "Suoshan Agricultural Genealogy" introduces the method of using insect combs to remove insects: "The Tian family raises the comb with his arms, and when he is tired, he will die." The worm is on the comb teeth of the comber's flesh and blood, and the child holds it to feed the chicken. "The worm here refers to the rice bud. Some agricultural books of the Ming and Qing dynasties introduced the method of sowing seeds early and striving for early ripening to avoid the peak of pests. In order to improve the effect of prevention and control, the ancients often used drugs to prevent and control while carrying out agricultural prevention and control.
Pre-Qin period
During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the "Zhou Li" contained in the "Attack on Jia Cao", "Mangcao Lavender", "Attack with Mirage Charcoal", "Sprinkle Poison with Ash", "Burn oysters with Ash sprinkle", etc., are the earliest records of the use of drugs to control pests in ancient China. "Jia cao", that is, today's Xianghe; "mangcao", that is, today's poisonous octagonal; "oyster", that is, today's wild chrysanthemum, are all poisonous plants, and they have a certain effect on pest control; minerals such as "mirage" and "ash" also have a certain inhibitory effect on pests because they can change the environment in which pests occur and reproduce.
The Five Dynasties period from the Qin and Han dynasties to the Sui and Tang dynasties
The drug control in this period was mainly plant-based drugs, supplemented by mineral drugs. Plant-based drugs mainly include appendages, Ai Gao, Li Lu, Cang Er and so on. The seeding method advocated by the Western Han Dynasty is a method of processing seeds using animal bones, silkworm feces, sheep dung, appendages and other materials. Among them, the "appendage", which contains "aconitine", has a certain insecticidal effect. In addition, Katsuyuki also summarized the experience of using mugwort to control wheat warehouse pests. The Shennong Materia Medica, written around the time of the Han and Wei dynasties, contains a record of Li Lu's "killing insect poisons". The Qi Min Zhi Shu uses Li Lu's experience in eradicating sheep ringworm and scabies. Modern science has proved that Li Lu contains "Li Lu", which has the dual effects of touch killing and stomach poisoning on pests. The experience of Cang'er in the control of warehouse pests is summarized in the "Four Hours of Compilation". The mineral medicines used during this period were mainly grass and wood ash and table salt. In the Jin Dynasty, Gan Bao first recorded the experience of controlling wheat moths with grass and wood ash in the "Book of Searching Gods", and Jia Sixun summarized the experience of using ash to control "melon cages" and the experience of "melon cages" when mixing seeds with salt.
Song and Yuan dynasties
During this period, there was a situation of plant medicine and mineral drugs in the control of drugs, and the plant drugs used at that time mainly included white, coriander, hundreds, neem, bitter ginseng, hemp leaves and so on. Su Shi's "Rough Talk on Grid Objects" has the experience of using white to control peony flower pests. In the "Must Use of Seed Art" and "Nongsang Ji ji", it is recorded that coriander flowers are used to control horticultural pests. If the tree is insectized , it can be killed by stuffing the borer hole with coriander flowers. During this period, people also commonly used hundreds of fruit tree pests to control. Modern science proves that the alkaloids contained in the hundreds are active ingredients for the control of pests. Another example is the Song Dynasty Zhao Xihu's "Compilation of Conjuring" also has the experience of using neem flowers to control pests, and later people have the practice of grinding neem branches or bark into powder to control vegetable pests. In the Yuan Dynasty, there are also records of the use of cang'er, spicy indigo, hemp stalks and other control warehouses to store pests. Mineral medicines in this period mainly used sulfur and ash. In Ouyang Xiu's "Luoyang Peony Record", the experience of controlling flower pests with sulfur hairpin holes is used; in "Seed Art Must Be Used", the method of controlling vegetable pests with sulfur is recorded; and Wang Zhen's "Agricultural Book" mentions the use of sulfur smoke to control mulberry pests. Chen Fu's "Agricultural Book" has the experience of sprinkling lime "in the mud" to remove the pest of borers before rice sowing, and believes that when planting vegetables, lime is mixed with manure and applied to the field, "insects cannot be eroded". The "Summary of Food and Clothing of Nongsang" puts forward the method of "using ash on the four banks" to control insect pests when planting medicines. Besides. Su Shi, Zhao Xihu, and others also summed up the experience of using tung oil to control insect pests. In the "Nongsang Ji ji", suzi oil is used to control pests such as spiders, buqu, and hemp worms and mulberry dogs.
At this time, in addition to inheriting the traditional drug prevention and control methods, mixed agents were also widely used, and chemical agents were tried, thereby improving the prevention and control effect. In the application of plant-based agents, croton, tobacco, triptolide and so on are used. Shen Bingcheng's "Sericulture Compilation" of the Qing Dynasty contains the experience of spraying croton liquid with spray canisters to control mulberry caterpillars and inchworms. In the "Chronicle of Jiyang County" during the Reign of the Qing Dynasty, tobacco stems were inserted into the mud of rice fields to control rice borers. In the Qing Dynasty Zhao Xuemin's "Compendium of Materia Medica", there is a record of Lei Gong Teng curing insects. Song Yingxing of the Ming Dynasty summed up the experience of Shaanxi, Henan, Shanxi and other regions in the use of arsenic to mix seeds and zhejiang Ning and Shao regions to use arsenic dipped in rice roots to control underground pests. In the Qing Dynasty Pu Songling's "Nongsang Jing", there are new methods for controlling underground pests in Shandong province by mixing seeds made of poisonous grains from letter stones, as well as the experience of using sulfur to control forest tree pests summarized by Xu Guangqi in the Ming Dynasty; the experience of using sulfur smoke to control smoking pests and using sulfur water to soak seedling roots to control rice insects in the Qing Dynasty's "Fu county agricultural production examination strategy". There were also new developments in the application of ash and oil to treat insects during this period. In addition, in order to improve the efficacy, people widely use mixed agents, mainly including: lime tung oil mixture, croton oil mixture, aceticline mixture, matrine lime mixture, copper sulfate lime mixture and so on. Biological control There is a long history of biological control of agricultural pests in China.
Western Zhou to Warring States period
During this period, there was a preliminary understanding of the phenomenon of mutual restraint between organisms, and the verse "The moth has a son, and the moth wins and loses" in the Book of Poetry, Xiaoya Xiaowan, shows that people as early as the Western Zhou Dynasty had a hazy understanding of parasitic bees. In the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, people had a further understanding of the phenomenon of mutual restraint between organisms, such as the "Zhuangzi Landscape chapter" contains that when Zhuang traveled around the Fan of the Eagle Tomb, he found that the mantis vibrated his arm to catch cicadas, and the magpie preyed on the phenomenon of mantis, and came to the conclusion that "things are solid and tired, and the two types are called". The "Warring States Policy" also talked about the phenomenon of dragonflies pecking at mosquitoes and flies, and all these understandings of the phenomenon of mutual restraint between organisms laid the initial ecological foundation for the biological control of agricultural pests. In the pre-Qin period, people's observations of "dove cutting reeds" and "() chopping wood" were the precursors of China's later protection of beneficial birds and insects. The "dove" mentioned here is the "wren", and its purpose of cutting the reed is to peck at the pests in the reed; "()" is a woodpecker, which has a sharp pointed beak and is good at pecking at the pests in the trees. Due to the discovery of this insectivorous bird, for example, the "Book of Rites and Moon Orders" put forward the ban on "logging" and the prohibition of "fetal birds" in the "Book of Rites and Moon Orders", which is the earliest record of the protection of beneficial birds in China.
During the Southern and Northern Dynasties from the Qin and Han dynasties to the Wei and Jin dynasties
People have a deeper understanding of the imagination of mutual restraint between organisms. For example, in wang chong's "On Balance and Material Potential" of the Eastern Han Dynasty, there is a discussion that "all things are beneficial to each other, and the insects containing blood win each other, eat each other, and eat each other". In his "Catalogue of Famous Doctors" during the Southern Dynasty Liang Dynasty, Tao Hongjing refuted the fallacy that Feng Ying raised the son of The Borer Ridge as a son. The life habits of parasitic wasps are more correctly explained. The "Southern Grass and Trees" first recorded the situation of our people using yellow fox ants to control citrus pests: "Those who store ants in the city with sacs, their sacs are like thin flocculents, the sacs are even branches and leaves, ants are in them, and they are sold." Ants are red, larger than regular ants, and if there are no ants in southern citrus, they are actually injured by the swarm, and there is no longer a finish. "It shows that at that time, the southern citrus producing areas had adopted the yellow fox ant as an important measure to control citrus pests." This is the earliest record of China's insect treatment of insects, and it is also the loss of sound in the world to treat insects with insects. During this period, the feudal government also attached great importance to the protection of birds and insects. As recorded in the Book of Han and the Chronicle of Emperor Xuan, in the third year of emperor Xuankang of the Western Han Dynasty (63 BC), Emperor Xinzi issued an edict to protect the birds: "It ordered the three assistants not to be able to explore the eggs in the spring () nest, catapult the birds, and have the order." During the Later Wei Dynasty, some magistrates also enacted and promulgated laws to protect beneficial birds. For example, in Kan's "Thirteen Prefectures Chronicle", there is such a record: "There are geese in Shangyu County who pull grass roots for the spring of the people's fields,...... County officials forbid the people not to harm this bird in vain, and those who commit crimes will not be forgiven. ”
The Five Dynasties of Sui to the Song and Yuan Dynasties
There has been an initial development in the biological control of agricultural pests in China. The first is that the scope of insect treatment has been expanded, and the methods have been innovated. In the Tang Dynasty, Liu Ke's "Records of the List of Mountains" talks about the case of people in the Lingnan region buying yellow fox ants to raise oranges. In the Song Dynasty Zhuang Jiyu's "Chicken Rib Compilation", there is a new method of collecting citrus ants, that is, to use the fat-loving habit of the yellow ant to "use the pig and sheep (bladder) to hold the fat in it and place it next to the ant nest, and when the ants enter, they will hold on to it". The Song Dynasty also developed the natural enemy () (armyworm) "unwilling". Shen Kuo's "Mengxi Pen Talk" said: "When you encounter a child fang worm, you will fight with a pincer, and it will be divided into two paragraphs, and the ten days will be exhausted, and the age will be great." There is a similar record in Su Shi's Dongpo Zhilin. The "sub-square" insect mentioned here is the armyworm, while the "unwilling" insect is a natural enemy insect such as the walking insect. During this period, there were also new developments in the protection of beneficial birds and insects. In the Tang Dynasty Duan Chengshi's "Youyang Miscellaneous Tricks", there are many examples of beneficial birds curing insects: first, in the twenty-third year of the New Century (735), there were insects in Yuguan (present-day Shanhaiguan), and there were also flocks of birds that ate at pingzhou (present-day Lulong County, Hebei); second, in the second year of Tianbao (743) Pinglu (present-day Chaoyang, Liaoning), there were purple insects eating grass seedlings, and there were red-headed birds flying in the northeast; third, in Kaiyuan, there were locusts in Beizhou (present-day Nangong County, Hebei) ate grass, with thousands of large white birds and tens of thousands of small white birds, eating their insects. During the Five Dynasties period, the Later Han Regime also attached great importance to the protection of Yi bird and insect control, as recorded in the "New Five Dynasties History of the Hidden Emperor", the emperor of Qianyou in the first year (948) issued an edict: "Order the people to prohibit the hunting of () partridges". In the third year of the Yuan Dynasty (1299), emperor Zeng Xin issued a decree "forbidden to hunt ()", because locusts "peck at the ground for () and "flyers are killed by wings". It can be seen that the beneficial birds protected during this period already have a variety of red-headed birds, great white birds, small white birds, etc., and agricultural pests such as purple insects and locusts controlled by beneficial birds are used.
Biological control methods during this period have been further developed, first of all, the application of the yellow ant is more extensive. During this period, the vast area of Lingnan not only expanded the control scope of yellow ants to citrus fruit trees such as citrus, orange, grapefruit and lemon, but also generally adopted methods such as "bamboo index" or "vine and bamboo indexing", so that yellow ants "come and go" and "trees and trees communicate", which improves the control effect. During this period, special attention was also paid to the protection of beneficial birds and insects, and there were cases of protecting beneficial birds and controlling insects in the county records of Lingshou, Guangling, Fengyang, Tangxian, Xiajin, Nanchang, Fengrun, Ninghe, Danyang, Yexian, Renhua and other counties. The beneficial birds that are protected are mountain magpies, white birds, sea pigeons, white-necked birds, falcons, harriers, yellow finches and other kinds, and the pests controlled by them are mainly locusts, and there are also pests such as sticky insects. During this period, ducks were also widely released to treat insects. According to the Ming Dynasty's "Huo Wenmin's Collected Writings", "Xiangshan, Shunde, Panyu, Nanhai, Xinhui, Dongguan and other places in Guangdong "produce a worm called a silkworm, which can eat the buds of the grain, which is a great harm to agriculture, but the duck can eat it, so the ducks in the world are only prosperous in Guangnan." Many places in the Qing Dynasty used ducks to hunt locusts with good results. Lu Shiyi's "Record of Eliminating Locusts" has a vivid description of the release of ducks to control locusts: "The locusts have not yet been released, the ducks can eat them, and the ducks are hundreds of themselves into the rice furrows, () are exhausted in an instant, and the Jiangnan catch () is also a law." Chinese min also created a biological control method for the control of pox poison locusts in the late Qing Dynasty or the early Ming Dynasty, such as the Hubei "Puxi County Rural Chronicle" contains: "The locusts are caught, the puncture points are made of pox pulp, the order flies away, the pox poison is infected, and the species is self-extinguishing." "This is a precedent for Chinese people to treat insects with viruses."