What four things are used to delay pesticide resistance?

• A. Correct pest identification; Use the correct pesticide; Use the correct dosage; Apply pesticide correctly
• B. Rotate crops; Reduce water; Use older pesticides; Apply at night
• C. Apply as soon as pest appears; Use the highest rate; Use multiple pesticides
• D. Ignore resistance; Use random pesticides

Answer: (B)

Pesticide resistance develops when pests that survive a treatment pass on those tolerant traits to their offspring. To slow that process, you want to lower the chance that any one pest survives a given spray and you diversify how you manage pests.

Rotating crops helps because it disrupts pest life cycles and reduces the continuous pressure from the same pest species each season. When pest pressure is not constant, there’s less consistent selection for resistance to a particular chemical.

Reducing water can limit the conditions that allow pest populations to thrive, which means you don’t need to spray as aggressively and you lower the overall selection pressure on pesticides.

Using older pesticides as part of a rotation of different modes of action introduces variety in how pests are attacked. If you mix in products with different ways of working, pests aren’t consistently exposed to the same mode of action, making it harder for resistance to build.

Applying at night can improve spray effectiveness and reduce drift, and it often aligns better with pest activity or beneficial organism patterns. This can enable effective control with possibly lower rates and less collateral pressure on pest populations.

In contrast, actions focused on immediate, heavy, or repeated use—such as spraying as soon as pests appear, using the highest labeled rate, or applying multiple pesticides at once—tend to increase selection pressure and accelerate resistance.

So these four practices together create a more varied, less pressure-filled approach that helps delay resistance.