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The withdrawal of approvals for agrochemicals on many food crops within Europe is likely to generate an increasing market for bio-pesticide products, including entomopathogenic nematodes (EPN). However, for the EPN to be a success, a cost-effective and reliable usage should be assured. Therefore, progress in areas like application and formulation technology is needed, next to the development of optimal application strategies. A new research project will focus on optimizing the field application of EPN in vegetables. First, both application and formulation technologies will be optimized. Then, these technologies will be tested under semi-field conditions with special attention for the effect of weather conditions and timing of the application. All the acquired knowledge will be implemented and evaluated in field experiments. In this paper, the first results of the experiments on application technology are discussed.

The effect of several passages through a centrifugal pump on the viability and activity of Steinernema corpocapsoe was investigated. A tendency of reduced viability was detected after 10 passages through the centrifugal pump, but the difference was not statistically significant. Activity decreased significantly from 91.9% to 83.6%. The experimental set-up was chosen to eliminate temperature increase. Therefore, the results prove that mechanical pump damage cannot be excluded as the cause of EPN damage during spray application.