When your customers request a flea treatment, they expect the best. If you want a long lasting treatment, using an adulticide alone just won’t cut it…
When carrying out general pest treatments, many pest managers want to get in and out as quickly as possible and use their ‘go to’ general purpose insecticide for every treatment. But when it comes to flea and cockroach treatments, the addition of insect growth regulators (IGRs) provides the opportunity for pest management professionals to deliver superior treatments.
There are two types of IGRs used in pest control in Australia, the chitin synthesis inhibitors which primarily disrupt moulting and juvenile hormone analogues which inhibit metamorphosis, embryogenesis and egg hatch.
Sumilarv contains the juvenile hormone analogue pyriproxifen, which works on many of the life stages of both fleas and cockroaches. Sumilarv affects cockroaches by both sterilising females, which lay infertile eggs and killing nymphs late in the moulting process.
When used on fleas, Sumilarv affects all stages of the life cycle. It interferes with the hormone balance of larvae which turn into misshapen pupae or misshapen supernumerary larva which die after a short period, inhibits egg hatch and has a strong ovicidal effect on females.
IGRs can be very long lasting, with Sumilarv preventing flea egg hatch for up to 12 months.
By working on multiple stages of the life cycle of these insects, Sumilarv has a greater impact on the whole population than the use of an adulticide alone.
Sumilarv offers additional benefits; with the different mode of action to ‘kill’ insecticides, it is an ideal resistance management tool and its favourable safety profile means it is exempt from poison scheduling.
To be able to tell your consumers you are targeting all life stages, “breaking the breeding cycle” and provide long lasting protection, the addition of an IGR really adds value to your service.
