357 Environment Management Technology for Controlling Spider Mites K. Ohyama 1,2 , T. Suzuki 1,3 , H. Amano 4 , M. Shah 5 and N.A. Ghazy 2 1 Center for Environment, Health and Field Sciences, Chiba University, Chiba Japan 2 Graduate School of Horticulture, Chiba University, Chiba, Japan 3 Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science, Tokyo, Japan 4 Graduate School of Agriculture, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan 5 Department of Entomology, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Agricultural University, Peshawar, Pakistan Keywords: air temperature, artificial lighting, IPM, predatory mite, water vapor Abstract Spider mites (Acari: Tetranychidae) are widespread phytophagous pests that cause serious damage to agricultural crops in fields and greenhouses. Growers have great difficulty in managing spider mites because many of the species easily develop a tolerance to acaricides. To offset the ineffectiveness of chemical measures, there is an urgent need to introduce physical and biological measures through integrated pest management (IPM). Hence, we have attempted to introduce an environment management technology for controlling spider mites, specifically: 1) diapause disruption of the twospotted spider mite Tetranychus urticae Koch and the Kanzawa spider mite T. kanzawai Kishida; and 2) effective use of the predatory mite Neoseiulus californicus McGregor (Acari: Phytoseiidae). Through our studies, we demonstrated the importance of environment management technology for controlling the spider mites. We also expect that physical and biological measures based on this technology will greatly contribute to the establishment of effective IPM for spider mites as well as other pest species. INTRODUCTION The spider mite is one of the most common and serious pests for a wide variety of crops (Van de Vrie et al., 1972; Takafuji et al., 2000). Although acaricides are generally used as a control measure, spider mites can rapidly develop a tolerance to acaricides because of their short life cycle (e.g., Hoy, 2011). Hence, for reducing dependency on chemical measures and introducing physical and/or biological measures, integrated pest management (IPM) is needed. Extensive research for IPM development is conducted by entomologists and acarologists. So far, these studies have focused mainly on phenomenological or physiological aspects of pest insects and mites, and further development is expected by integrating new ideas from different specialties, e.g., environment management technology. Hence, we have been trying to introduce this technology as a method that can be employed in IPM as well as to open up a new interdisciplinary research area (Fig. 1). This article reports on the use of environment management technology for controlling spider mites. One example of the physical measures investigated is management of the light environment for disrupting diapause in the spider mites. We also describe the control of air temperature and water vapor environments for the storage of predatory mites that are a natural enemy of spider mites. ENVRONMENT MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGY Light Environment For precise management of the light environment, we developed a system composed of multiple white light-emitting diodes (LED), each installed in an aluminum bottle (Suzuki et al., 2007; Suzuki et al., 2011). In the latest lighting system (Suzuki et al., 2011), light intensity and photoperiod are controlled automatically by changing the duty ratio of electric voltage at a constant electric current. In addition, the duty ratio is defined Proc. II International Symposium on Horticulture in Europe Eds.: J.-C. Mauget and S. Godet Acta Hortic. 1099, ISHS 2015