Pest Control
Pest Control is the practice of keeping bugs and other pests away from crops and homes.
A kitchen has a covered bread box that keeps ants out of the loaf inside. Around the box, a ring of bay leaves acts as a barrier — ants avoid the smell and turn back. Any cracks in the box let ants slip through to the bread. Pest control works the same way: barriers and repellents keep pests away from the things they want to reach.
Explaining pest control by grade level
Some bugs eat the plants we grow for food. One way to stop them is to use other bugs that eat the bad ones. In one test, small beetles ate a weed that was taking over a field. The beetles helped the crops grow without any spray.
Projects that explore pest control
Some plants can work as bug killers. In this test, you try three of them on crickets. You put 15 crickets in each box, then add pyrethrum, wormwood, or rosemary. You check every two hours to count how many are still alive. One of the three works much better than the rest.
Not all pesticides come from a factory. Chili pepper, neem oil, and onion are natural ingredients that may protect plants just as well as chemical sprays. To find out, you soak chili pepper and onion in hot water, mix neem oil with warm water, and spray each solution on a separate potted plant. A fifth plant stays unsprayed as the control. Every three days over two weeks, you rate leaf damage on a scale of one to ten. The results show whether biopesticides can match a store-bought chemical pesticide — or whether natural options fall short.