Introduction. Plants develop
mechanisms that allow them to compartmentalize injuries that they
suffer during their life. In trees, pruning and injection treatments
must be used in accordance with precise rules to reduce risks resulting
from the injuries created. Sealing in palms. Palms,
contrary to widespread belief, are quite capable of “healing” injuries
(sealing); because of an anatomy quite different from trees, the
sealing process in palms is much simpler. Compartmentalization
of injection wounds. The controversy on the use of injection
in trees is due essentially to initial mistakes that have then been
rectified. Injection in palms against the red palm weevil.
For palms, for decades, this technique has been employed without
problems and with great efficiency against various pests, including
Rhynchophorus ferrugineus, the red palm weevil
(RPW). Its use has been reserved for exceptional situations either
to face abnormal pest proliferation, uncontrollable by other techniques,
or to implement eradication programs. Integrated eradication
program. In such a program, the main aim of injection treatments
is preventive. With long-persistence insecticides, the number of treatments
could be greatly reduced. The resulting savings in time and money
would enable the organization of the treatments of all the palms located
in an infested area, and consequently the rapid eradication of the
pest. New perspectives. We established that insecticides
applied by injection were capable of protecting palms with only
two or even one treatment per year. These results suggest a radical
improvement in programs to eradicate RPW, while considerably reducing
the risks to health and the environment compared with spray treatments.