Increasing organic cotton production in Benin West Africa with a supplementary food spray product to manage pests and beneficial insects

Organic cotton is considered a high-value crop in Benin, West Africa, but problems of high costs and reduced yield arising from the lack of effective pest control have left cotton farmers with low profit margins. We have developed a novel supplementary food spray product (Benin Food Product, BFP) to attract and retain beneficial insects on these crops to improve the management of pests. Applications of BFP to organic cotton, with and without other biological control agents, attracted and increased the densities of predatory insects, significantly reducing pest insect numbers and producing higher yields than in cotton treated with neem extract or in cotton that was untreated. In economic terms, the average gross profit margin on the BFP-treated plot was 125,340 FCFA (French Communaute Financiere Africaine; USA $ = 483 FCFA) with 80,248, 89,450 and 968 FCFA on plots treated with neem extract, synthetic insecticides, and no control agent, respectively. These results clearly show that a supplementary food spray, combined with biological pesticides such as neem extract, sugar, and nuclear polyhedrosis virus, could have a positive economic impact on organic cotton production in Benin.