When growing Arabidopsis as an experimental orgamsm, the best standards of hygiene should be adopted to ensure uniform plant growth, representative populations are mamtamed for mapping analysis, and potentially useful new mutants are not lost m the early fragile stages of screening. Arabidopsis 1s prone to many of the pests that commonly infect greenhouses and growthrooms (1 ,2 ). These can cause severe damage to the plants and, m some cases, can kill them. In general, the best philosophy to adopt m pest management is that of prevention rather than cure.