Authors: Paige Beuhler and Ines Hanrahan, March 2024
For 2024, the Washington Tree Fruit Research Commission approved $382,412 to help fund six (6) new Apple Crop Protection projects.
2024 New Apple Crop Protection Project Details
Project Title: New Organic Fireblight Products and Timings for Season Long Control
Organization(s): Washington State University
Principal Investigator(s): DuPont, T.; Baro Sabe, A.
Total Funding Amount for All Years: $77,693
Length: 3 Years
Fire blight is a devastating disease of apples and pears causing significant economic losses. When springs are warm and wet, fire blight can severely impact growers. Potential elimination of antibiotic tools, increased resistance of the fire blight pathogen to antibiotics, and large certified organic acreage make antibiotic alternatives critical. This project aims to improve organic fire blight management by finding effective, new, and organic alternatives for the control of blossom blight, in order to avoid depending on the use of antibiotics, achieving a reduction in antibiotic resistance in the environment. The specific goals of this project are:
- Test new organic fire blight products of interest for the growers for efficacy and fruit safety.
- Improve organic product timings by identifying relationships between product efficacy and environmental conditions (e.g. UV, humidity).
- Provide research-based recommendations to growers through web-based platforms (Crop Protection Guide, Decision Aid System), news alerts, field days and consultations.
Project Title: Developing the Toolkit for Codling Moth Hotspot Management
Organization(s): Washington State University
Principal Investigator(s): Curtiss, R.; Northfield, T.; Orpet, R.; Dupont, T.
Total Funding Amount for All Years: $499,000
Length: 3 years
Though codling moths are often exposed to similar tactics regionally, management success varies from farm to farm and block to block. Some areas, known as hotspots or problem blocks, experience higher than normal pest pressure, but the causes are not typically clear, and the solutions are left up to individual farmers and consultants to discover. Hotspots are common throughout Washington’s apple growing regions, and nearly every farm visited by the Principal Investigator has at least one. The overall goal of this research proposal is to combine industry interviews, replicated experiments, and extension to develop a toolkit for diagnosing and eliminating hotspots. The main objectives for this project are:
- Establish an advisory group and conduct industry interviews to better define hotspots’ and problem blocks’ current management needs.
- Understand on-farm sources of hotspot infestations with on-farm damage assessments and a replicated mark-release-recapture/trapping/band study in vs. out of hotspots (moths collected in bands may be used in insecticide resistance assessments).
- Develop new approaches to codling moth management, including conventional tactics that target late instar larvae, pupae, and adults, refinement and deployment of new organic control strategies, and variable Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) as a hotspot safety-valve treatment.
- Establish standard operating procedures and step by step how-to guide for managing hotspots and problem areas and provide extension education in a series of study circles in fruit growing regions throughout the state each year.
Project Title: Best Practices for Releasing Lacewings in Apples
Organization(s): United States Department of Agriculture-Agriculture Research Station
Principal Investigator(s): Schmidt-Jeffris, R.
Total Funding Amount for All Years: $81,149
Length: 3 Years
Apple growers are experimenting with releasing commercially available natural enemies for pest management. Some producers use lacewings for aphid and mealybug control. Organic management options for these pests are limited and conventional programs would benefit from additional tools. The explicit goal of this project is to bring together the prior knowledge on releases and answer targeted questions based on past trials and grower input, and in doing so, provide growers with clear guidance for large-scale, commercial implementation of lacewing releases at the conclusion of the project. The three main objectives of this project are as follows:
- Determine which method of releasing lacewings results in the greatest establishment and pest control.
- Compare species, life stages, and cards versus loose eggs.
- Compare drone to ground releases at orchard-scale.
- Determine which lacewing release rate is most effective for aphid control.
- Determine the effects of organic pesticides on insectary-reared lacewings.
- Determine acute toxicity of organic pesticides to lacewings.
- Determine the duration that field-aged residues remain harmful.
Project Title: Assessing Refugia Plantings for Biocontrol Services
Organization(s): Washington State University
Principal Investigator(s): Orpet, R.; Luppino, M.; Curtiss, RT.
Total Funding Amount for All Years: $98,636
Length: 2 Years
Wildflower refugia plantings are valuable resources for natural enemies of pest insects. Wildflower plantings can host alternative prey for predators and parasitoids to build populations, and natural enemies of pests often use nectar and pollen resources for nutrition. Due to a lack of detailed and concerted study, potential benefits, and risks of refugia plantings on biocontrol in apple orchards in Washington are currently speculative. Potential benefits include increased abundance and diversity of biocontrol species in refugia-augmented orchards, and decreased abundance of key pests in orchards such as woolly apple aphid and leafrollers. This project will measure such effects. It will also determine if codling moth parasitoids utilize the resources found in habitat refuge plantings, thus benefiting by their establishment. Surveys of plants found in habitat plantings will also check for problematic plants like hawthorn, which can host codling moths. Addressing these questions will grant growers a deeper understanding of the costs and benefits associated with pollinator refugia plantings. The four main objectives of this project include:
- Quantify natural enemy and plant communities in refugia plantings with weekly sampling at sites in the Columbia Basin across two growing seasons.
- Assess spillover of natural enemies and effects on pests from the wildflower plantings by sampling in transects starting in the apple orchard edge row and extending up to 1,000 ft into the orchard.
- Create a codling moth parasitoids reference collection housed at WSU-TFREC, to document and assist with identifications in Objective 2.
- Share findings, including practical advice on economics of plantings relative to biocontrol benefits.
Project Title: Evaluation and Optimization of Robotics Plus and VariMas 3 Sprayers
Organization(s): Washington State University
Principal Investigator(s): Hoheisel, G.; Khot, L.
Total Funding Amount for All Years: $53,443
Length: 1 Year
Innovative sprayer designs, nozzles, spray adjuvants, and several machine-related factors can reduce off-target drift and improve spray application efficiency and efficacy. There are many sprayer models or intelligent sprayer retrofits available commercially and the principal investigators of this project have evaluated some of these technologies. However, the sprayers to be evaluated in this project are new to the U.S. and Washington.
Robotics Plus offers a fully robotic platform with tower sprayer assembly that uses Sardi fan heads.
The Munckhof Mfg. offers a larger three-row sprayer (model: VariMas 3) with directed air and traditional nozzles. The three main objectives of this project are:
- With manufacturers and cooperators, optimize sprayers and conduct deposition studies.
- Document best management practices (BMPs) and limitations/incentives to technology adoptions.
- Summarize results for outreach.
Project Title: Whirligig Mite: A New Biocontrol Agent for Apples and Pears
Organization(s): United States Department of Agriculture-Agriculture Research Station, Washington State University Benton and Franklin County Extension
Principal Investigator(s): Schmidt-Jeffris, R.; Cooper, R.; Ohler, B.
Total Funding Amount for All Years: $109,581
Length: 3 Years
Whirligig mites (Anystis baccarum) are voracious predatory mites that can be found worldwide and are native to the Pacific Northwest. They are larger, red mites that can be observed running in rapid circular patterns on orchard leaves, bark, and beat tray samples. They are generalist predators that attack a wide variety of pests. Whirligigs have been noted to have unusually high prey consumption rates and can consume prey larger than themselves. The primary goal of this project is to determine if augmentation or conservation of whirligigs shows promise for improving control of key orchard pests. The team will do this by determining (1) if high release rates result in decreases of monitored pests, (2) if released whirligigs establish, (3) the diet breadth of released whirligigs, and (4) which orchard pesticides are whirligig-compatible. If so, results from the project will lay the groundwork for a larger effort to determine ideal release rates, timing, and best practices for establishment. The main objectives of this project are:
- Evaluate effects of whirligig releases on codling moth fruit damage and other pest populations in apples.
Release timing will target codling moth, but this timing will allow the team to monitor the effects on other apple pests that are also consistently present in the research orchard, including woolly apple aphid, rosy apple aphid, green apple aphid, and thrips. Mealybugs are more sporadically present, but they will be sampled as part of pest monitoring efforts.
- Verify that whirligigs eat target pests in orchards.
Prior work has only evaluated the diet of whirligigs collected near potato fields and examined lab predation of orchard pests. This objective will confirm that they consume pests in orchards after release.
- Screen non-target effects of conventional and organic pesticides on whirligigs in laboratory assays.
The team will start by screening whirligigs captured in near-orchard habitat as they have found abundant populations in multifloral rose near commercial orchards. Once Crazee mites are permitted for shipping to Washington, they will also test the insectary population.
Contact:
Paige Beuhler (Administrative Officer), 509 665 8271 ext. 2
Ines Hanrahan (Executive Director), 509 669 0267
