Text Transcript and Description of Visuals
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| Music plays. | Title card. Presentation title: Importance of Sanitation for Codling Moth. Interviewee information: Mark LePierre, Director of Orchard Operations for FirstFruits Farms |
| Welcome Mark LePierre. We’re here to talk about cultural controls for codling moth, and we really wanted to have you focus on sanitation and scouting, borders, hot spots, hand thinning, etc. So can you first tells us–you have vast experiences in codling moth and the tree fruit industry–so can you tells us some of your background? | Two speakers appear on screen in a split screen video call. |
| I lead the orchard operations at FirstFruit Farms. 30 plus years of tree fruit production, and that’s many generations of codling moth. | Mark appears full screen |
| There is a few. Codling moth years is how you can calculate that. | View switches back to split screen of Mark and the interviewer. |
| Yeah, exactly. We don’t wanna add that up. | |
| Okay, so Mark, in your vast years of experience, can you tell us: what are the tools that you use to scout for codling moth? Do you use traps or lures? Modeling? What are the things that you use to understand the codling moth population and presence? | A close up photo of a codling moth on the surface of a plant appears on screen. |
| So, of course we use models and count degree days and biofix, but primarily that’s first generation. After that, it’s traps and scouting that we predominantly use. | Mark appears full screen |
| Okay, so you have originally this model. You’re using traps and scouting. Do you combine that information in decisions on when to spray or start initial timing for applications? | View switches back to split screen of Mark and the interviewer. |
| So we start with basically our timing for first generation using models and degree units. From then on, we’re really looking at our trap counts and our history on blocks to determine how long we’re going to let our first generation sprays go and our intervals of sprays. And a lot of that’s determined on our pressure in the blocks. | Mark appears full screen |
| Okay, you made an interesting point there. You’re looking at trap counts and history, is there a specific threshold number that you use, or is it relative to what the history is? | View switches back to split screen of Mark and the interviewer. |
| I think it’s both, you know? We’ll have some trap counts that might surprise us, but I think mostly it’s history. | Mark appears full screen |
| As far as you know whether it’s one, two, or five codling moths per trap per week. You know, we’re looking at those numbers certainly, but I think a lot of it’s history and how far we’re out on individual sprays and how long we trust those. | A photo of a codling moth trap with many moths stuck to the glue appears on screen. |
| How do you identify a hot spot? How do you identify that there’s a problem or something that’s going on? | View switches back to split screen of Mark and the interviewer. |
| So I think we could actually start with the history portion of it, because we could probably go to the map right now and highlight the areas that we’re concerned about coming into this year, right now. And I think that’s really important, because they’re more concerned about those because of last season and how many problems we may or may not have. We have hot spots and we have areas that we would say are traditionally low pressure. So we have a good solid program for the traditionally low pressure, and we have a full attention to the hot spots. And that’s kind of how we come into this season. The trap density is different in those areas. We have many acres that, because of the cost of trapping and because of the history of low pressure, we are not very dense our trap cast. Then we have our hot spots, and we can’t ever seem to have enough. But we certainly rely on history to give us that trap placement. Then once we start catching codling moth in those areas of high pressure, that really catches our attention. | Mark appears full screen |
| And we know that ill-managed codling moth populations can lead to multiple years worth of issues as they overwinter in that area. So can you give any more detail on what are the specifics on how you manage or make decisions in a hot spot? | View switches back to split screen of Mark and the interviewer. |
| Well of course, it starts with the traps, but then it also is scouting. So we don’t want to be late with our first generation cover sprays in those areas. So we time those based on the model, and we get the program started there. | Mark appears full screen |
| Then we have borders that we routinely inspect in those in those areas where we would expect to find maybe entries as we start to run towards the end of that cover spray. | A photo of a trellised apple orchard row appears. |
| I’m going to switch gears on you a little bit. Do you have experience on hand thinning for codling moth and do you have recommendations? | View switches back to split screen of Mark and the interviewer. |
| So let’s say we have a border where we start to pick up stings. I think that primarily that’s an organic program for us. I think we would handle that differently in conventional. We would probably shorten our intervals if we started to see that we were picking up stings and continue to monitor. If we were in an organic setting, we would probably remove fruit if we thought that we had enough to go out and get. | Mark appears full screen |
| We have at times done that. We’ll invest our time and our efforts in the first generation to do that, usually to try to stay as clean as we can be going into subsequent generations. | A close up photo of apples growing on a tree appears. |
| So thank you for that background. So can you give more detail on the methodology that you all are using for hand thinning to remove codling moth or limit their populations a little bit. | View switches back to split screen of Mark and the interviewer. |
| Yeah, so we’ll go in when we feel like we’re seeing stings and we will actually thin that fruit off into buckets. Then we’ll put those in bins with liners, and at the end of the day, we will remove that fruit and dispose of it. We feel that it’s hard to see early on, but it’s better to do that. The fruit size is small. | Two hands reach up into an apple tree and pluck small, unripe fruit off of the branch. |
| As you do it later in subsequent generations, fruit size gets to be bigger and you have some escapes. So we’ll try to hit those hot spots maybe two or three times depending on what we have in organic production. We’re probably not as likely to do that in conventional unless something’s really got away from us. | Mark appears full screen |
| Have you ever done an economic evaluation on how many stings or how much damage would tell you to pull the trigger and send a crew out there to hand thin? | View switches back to split screen of Mark and the interviewer. |
| Well we certainly understand the cost when we do it. The interesting part of that is, you don’t really know how big the problem is until you pull the trigger to put the crew in. So I think that what I would say is, invest the time and the money in the first generation, because the payback is there. | Mark appears full screen |
| So in organic settings, quite typically, we know where we’ll see the stings first, and it’ll be on borders or it’ll be on high spots in the block. We’ll go in and get those and I think that the payback is there. I think that the high cost that we endure is when we don’t do that, and then we have maybe two generations coming on what we have escaped. That’s where the cost really comes in, is having to spray to the beginning of harvest. | A close up photo of an apple with five holes made by codling moths seen on it’s surface. |
| So another small changing gears, but same main topic of cultural controls. Do you have experience or opinions on tree banding? | View switches back to split screen of Mark and the interviewer. |
| Yes, certainly. We’ve done it, not every year, but almost every year, we have certain areas in organic production where we’ll implement it. | Mark appears full screen |
| We put the four-inch bands around the trunk of the tree. Primarily the end of the season is when we use that. We haven’t had as much luck on first generation with it, but if we have a block that we’ve had pressure throughout the year in, we certainly do the borders. We certainly do areas where we have stings visible, and that usually starts for us towards the end of August. We’ll make a trip through banding, and then we remove those the end of October or towards the end of October. | An image of corrugated cardboard strips wrapped and taped onto the trunks of apple trees appears. |
| Do you have any other suggestions on best management practices for successful tree banding? | View switches back to split screen of Mark and the interviewer. |
| Yeah, I do. I think with a lot of these tactics there’s a lot of cost involved when you do it. So I think what we do is we try to design the map so that we’re putting our money in the most efficient spots. And that may be doing part of a block, that may be doing all of a block but not the next block. So we haven’t been very successful in getting codling moth in bands if our pressure isn’t there. So we try to reduce our cost by hitting those areas that that we know we can get 5 to 15 larva per band in hot spots, sometimes a little more. So then then it’s really cost effective, I think, for us to be doing it. | Mark appears full screen |
| Yeah, so similar to what you just said a few minutes ago: that you could probably fill out the map and identify where your hotspots are. Your hot spots are where you’re going to end up putting the most effort likely on this hand thinning and tree banding as the summer progresses? | View switches back to split screen of Mark and the interviewer. |
| Exactly, and it’s really interesting. We have actually taken our hot spots in organic and done maybe a mass trap, one generation. And we’ll have areas where we’ll catch 30 or 40 moths in a week in those areas. And you can, in a short walk, go to where that number is zeros and ones and twos in the same block. So there’s areas where they like to be. Topography plays into it, and so we try to learn those spots and then invest our controls in those spots. Otherwise, the economics change quite a bit when you do it on a block by block basis. | Mark appears full screen |
| Yeah, and just to be clear, these are spots that you are still also doing codling moth control with chemical control and pheromone control and then you’re using these other cultural controls to really reduce the population, correct? | View switches back to split screen of Mark and the interviewer. |
| Absolutely, these blocks get our full attention in all of those categories. That’s what we think that it takes. So the basic premise that we operate on is, we need to keep the codling moth population to a threshold level so that the mating disruption can work. Once it gets above there, then we have a lot of problems with any of our control tactics. So we implement everything to get those hot spots down below that threshold where mating disruption will help us. Once we’re above that, then we do everything. Again, it’s not on the whole farm. it’s in these areas where, if we can control them there, we can control them everywhere. | Mark appears full screen |
| Sometimes some of these cultural controls are thought about as effective uses in small acreage, because it takes a big crew to go through a block. Do you ever have any trouble or consideration about scaling these hand methods of codling moth control to thousands of acres? | View switches back to split screen of Mark and the interviewer. |
| I think it’s just as effective in large scale. In fact it’s maybe easier when you control almost an area-wide amount, so you have a greater feel of the trap catches over a wide area. You know the controls in the blocks next to those, and you have the history of those hot spots. So I think I would go back to the map. I think we can maybe, with what we’ve learned, we can go back to the map and highlight those areas that we already know we’re gonna we’re gonna fight the codling moth edge and try to be prepared for that better. | Mark appears full screen |
| So we’re experiencing typically hotter than normal summers, which usually means the codling moth might develop at a little bit of a faster time period. Are you seeing any other issues that these warmer summers are bringing on with your codling moth populations? | View switches back to split screen of Mark and the interviewer. |
| Oh yes, it’s very evident on the hot years, and we have another generation that fits in. I think it draws more attention to the first generation than trying to stay clean. But even when we do that, we’ll have areas, maybe they’re around a bin pile, maybe they’re due to the topography. We’ll have a large area that all the moths seem to migrate up and make a hot spot. We have that at times. So more generations, more problems, you know? We’re dealing with cooling late. We’re trying to get the most out of our sprays. So everything gets to be more challenging with hotter seasons. | Mark appears full screen. A chart of typical codling moth life history appears on screen showing the different life stages as peaks on a graph which spans from April to September. |
| Mark, I really want to thank you for talking with us today. If you have one bit of sage advice for sanitation and around hand thinning and tree banding and looking for hot spots, what recommendations do you have? What do you really need people to hear as their take-home messages for being successful in these? | View switches back to split screen of Mark and the interviewer. |
| Well I think that it gets back to that threshold number, that we want to try to stay below so that our mating disruption and all our other tactics seem to work better. Management becomes quite difficult above that threshold. So whether we’re talking organic or conventional, the idea is to keep our population below that threshold so that we can we can actually have our mating disruption perform well for us and also not have these hot spots develop. | Mark appears full screen |
| Yeah, so I once heard a very sage entomologist, Jay Brunner say, that the best use of biological control in codling moth is to prevent the outbreaks so that the rest of the controls would be the most efficacious. I think that’s similar to what you’re saying here. | View switches back to split screen of Mark and the interviewer. |
| Exactly, we have a lot of good strategy, but it starts to fail at high populations. I think if we keep it below that threshold, we allow our basic program to work quite well. Once we get above that, our IPM programs break down and we have to use more controls. | Mark appears full screen. Text above him reads “Use of tree thinning in the spring with disposal of stings and banding in the fall to augment other control tactics of mating disruption and sprays that are integral in IPM. |
| Well thank you very much for coming today and sharing your advice. And yeah, much appreciated, thank you. | View switches back to split screen of Mark and the interviewer. |
| Music plays. | Credits roll for interview and video production roll. |
Link to YouTube video: Codling Moth-Sanitation
