Betsy Beers, WSU Entomology spoke at the 2024 NCW Tree Fruit Days on codling moth management. She described factors influencing trap catch and two years of new product efficacy data. NCW Tree Fruit Days is co-sponsored by WSU Extension, NCW Fieldman’s Association, NW Cherry Growers and Pear Bureau Northwest.
Text Transcript and Description of Visuals
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| Title slide. Presentation title: New Products and Approaches for Codling Moth Management. Speaker information: Elizabeth H. Beers. | |
| And thank you so much for inviting me here to talk about these things this morning. | The speaker appears on stage at a podium. |
| Codling Moth is a perennial favorite topic. | The title slide reappears on screen. |
| I bet you haven’t had a tree fruit apple day in… since recorded time, where codling moth hasn’t been under discussion. It’s just one of those pests that won’t go away. | |
| It’s been our key pest since we started growing apples in the 1880s and I really don’t think it’s going to go away anytime soon. | |
| Before I talk about some new approaches, I also want to cover just a few basic principles. And the first basic principle is that everything I talk about assumes that you are using mating disruption. So, that is the base, that is the foundation. And then there are other things that we put on top of that to make sure that we keep our codling moth under control. | The view changes back to the speaker on stage. |
| So why will codling moth always be a pest? Here’s just a few ideas. First of all, for fresh fruit growers, not for processed, but we’re a fresh fruit state. The consumer gets to see that apple. If there’s any pest damage, it’s going to be pretty apparent to them. You can’t hide that in a can of puree. It is a direct and internal pest, which means its going to be living inside that fruit, and consumers don’t like that. The economic injury level is therefore very, very low when you compare it to something like a mite or an aphid. The economic injury level is just abysmally low, and on top of that, you put some quarantine restrictions, some export restrictions, and that again, forces that economic injury level to a very, very low point. We don’t really have an effective way of sorting out codling moth damage on the packing line. It slows down our lines. It’s hard to catch everything, and that means when it comes into the packing house its got to have a very low level of damage. And last, we count on biological control in so many situations, but codling moth really just isn’t one of them. That makes me sad as an entomologist, I wish it were. But when your economic injury level is so low and biological control presumes that you have to have some population to keep it going, or an alternative host, you could suppress it, but it may take you without anything else. It may take you from 75% fruit damage down to 30% fruit damage and 30% fruit damage is still a disaster in anybody’s book. | Slide titled “Why will codling moth always be a key pest?” appears which contains a checklist of six contributing factors as outlined in the audio. |
| So, first of all, I want to talk a little bit about the codling moth model. This was brought to Washington from Michigan State University in the 1980s by Jay Bruner. Jay had the vision to see the need for this model and started developing it in the State of Washington. There’s a couple of things that are really important about the model that I think we sort of forget. | Slide titled “Codling Moth Model in Washington” which contains the author and publication information of the mentioned paper as well as a section of the paper. Text on the right highlight that the model includes all developmental stages and that it tells you when to spray, not if you need to spray. |
| First of all, it uses 4 life stages, not just one. Not just the one that we typically see in our traps. All 4 life stages. What it does that’s really, really, important is it lets you see what’s happening with the life stages that are very hard to find in the field. How many of you have ever gone out to your orchard and seen a bunch of codling moths flying around. How many people have done that? | |
| If so, you’ve got way too many codling moths. I’ve only done it once or twice and I work in some of the most infested orchards in the state, our research orchards. We do a good job at producing codling moth, but they’re still not terribly apparent. Eggs are really tough to find. You can find them if you look hard enough and long enough in an infested orchard, but they’re hard to find. What’s really apparent is the larvae, because they leave that external damage on the surface of the fruit, whether it’s a sting or an entry. If you cut it open, you know where to go look for those larvae. And then pupae. You can sample for the pupae if you are willing to dig around on the trunks of the trees or put out bands. | |
| But basically, the model is telling you, without you having to go out and look for all these things, the model is telling you what’s happening, basically from March to October with all these different stages. And I can’t tell you how valuable that is when you’re trying to develop a management program. | |
| So here we have the WSU Decision Aids Program and this is, I call it, the Cadillac option of implementing models. It integrates weather data with our biological information that we have on codling moth and presents it to you along with recommendations for control, both organic and conventional. And this is the brainchild of Vince Jones, who started developing it about 18 years ago. And in, I think it was 2021, the directorship was taken over by Dr. David Crowder, also of the Department of Entomology at WSU. And this is unfortunately available by subscription rather than free, the way it used to be, but it is still an incredible amount of information presented in a pretty fabulous manner. | Slide titled “DAS: WSU Decision Aid System” contains an image of the DAS user interface along with photos of the developers. |
| So here is the familiar output that you’ve probably seen from the codling moth model, and these are the cumulative curves of all these 4 stages: egg larvae, pupae and adult. The stage that we observe most often, other than fruit damage, and a lot of us don’t have that much fruit damage in our orchards, so, the stage we observe most often is actually the adults. And that’s thanks to pheromone traps. | Slide titled “Codling Moth Model” shows a plot of codling moth cumulative proportion in stage versus the degree day at Sunrise Orchard in 2011. This information is shown for all four life stages. Three peaks in population are shown for each life stage |
| Adults are hard to come by unless you draw them into you. You looking for them versus them coming to you. And then all of a sudden, you can see, oh, yeah, there’s quite a few adults floating around here. Now, we used to be able to kill adults with our insecticides. I don’t think we really can to any extent anymore, but the target these days is really the eggs and the newly hatched larvae before they get into the fruit. Once they get into the fruit game over, you already have the damage, or you already have the larvae who’s safe and protected. So, eggs and the larvae as it’s wandering around looking for a place to bite into. Realistically, pupae are almost never a target for control sprays. They’re very resistant to sprays, and they’re going to be in a place that’s hard to get to anyway. So, our 2 target stages that the model tells us about so nicely are the eggs and those very young larvae. | |
| So just some basic stuff about the codling moth phenology model. It’s based on temperatures. Its temperature driven. Insects respond to varying levels of temperature. Don showed you some fabulous graphs about cool years and hot years, and how that changes how quickly codling moth can develop. And this is all based on degree days and the model. It uses the development of an individual, and then applies the probability or percentage of that individual moving to the next stage. But it’s based on, and it was developed with an undisturbed and unsprayed population. Once you start to spray something, you really mess it up.So, we’re talking about what codling moth does when you leave codling moth alone. Like I said, it uses all 4 life stages, and it’s not a population dynamics model. We know what percentage of the population is moving forward, but we don’t know what n is. We don’t know how many, whether you have 10 moths, 100 moths, or 10,000 moths out there. So, again, there’s some things that it does, and there are some things that it doesn’t do. | Slide titled “Codling Moth Phenology Model” contains a bullet point list outlining some key information about the model, as outlined in the audio. |
| The most accessible and used method of sampling codling moths is capturing adults in pheromone traps. And this was one of the first uses after they discovered the nature of pheromones, they quickly put together we could use this to trap these moths. This happened back in the 1970s and, at the time, it only allowed us to track male flight. That has since been expanded to females and it was a huge step forward in the ease of monitoring. Now, we did have things like bait pans and black lights that codling moth would fly to, and these can still be used. But pheromone traps are by far less messy and easier to use. We also used to use virgin females to bait the traps with. And, boy, that was tough. You talk about an effort. So, when the synthetic lure replaced that – the female that is – it meant anybody could go out and trap for codling moth. | Slide titled “Foundations: Sampling/Monitoring” contains a photo of a Delta moth trap, an image of the mating disrution lures, and a photo of a codling moth trap placed in an apple tree. |
| So, what exactly influences trap capture? And the trouble is, there’s a whole lot of stuff that does influence trap capture. First of all, and Don alluded to this also, the temperatures at dusk. This is when the codling moths come out to play, and will be flying around. So, if it’s too cold or too windy they won’t come out. If it’s raining, they won’t come out and respond to pheromones. The trap placement, whether it’s the border or the interior, may make quite a bit of difference in terms of the appearance of that trap, or if you have an outside source that could make a huge difference. The height in the tree, we’ve known for a long time that height makes a difference. Trap geometry, the shape of the trap. Lures have undergone a huge evolution in the past 20 years or so. Both their components and the loads. Both their components and the loads. The age of the lure, of course. Lures age as they stay out in the field. But a huge, huge factor in the performance of a trap is actually mating disruption itself. Because, if you remember, the early days, the indication of whether your mating disruption is working, is it shut down your trap catch. So, we responded by upping the lure load to try to overcome that shutdown effect. But basically this is not, we no longer have an undisturbed situation of a codling moth responding to a pheromone. | Slide titled “Factors Influencing Pheromone Trap Catch” contains a bullet point list of factors as outlined in the audio. |
| The other thing, of course, that makes a huge difference is where you are in the emergence curve. If you’re between generations, you’re not going to get a lot of adults. If you’re at the peak of one of the flights, then you could expect to see a lot more. | The view changes back to the speaker on stage. |
| But last, but not least, what you’re trying to estimate with that trap is codling moth density and that’s the X-factor. But what you might be measuring is any of the other dozen things that are going on in the field. And that’s what makes pheromone trapping so very challenging. | The slide “Factors Influencing Pheromone Trap Catch” appears back on screen. |
| So, a little bit more, and fortunately Don covered this pretty well, so I’m not going to spend a lot of time, but we see this threshold for flight, based on temperature. You don’t get any activity below 60 degrees, and they won’t actually meet above 62, and you hit the optimum somewhere around 70 degrees. So it’s not an on/off switch. As it gets warmer, they are much more likely to fly and mate. | Slide titled “Monitoring and Thresholds” contains a graph of activity level of moths versus the temperature. There is very little activity shown below 60 degrees. Text to the right of the graph states that flight ceases when there is almost any rain or wind above 3.5 miles per hour. |
| Height in the tree. You want to be in the upper third of the canopy. If you stick that trap too low where it’s easy to look at and easy to find. You’ll catch some moths, but you’ll not catch the same number as if you had in the tops of the trees. This is something we learned a long time ago, and that’s why everybody puts their codling moth traps up on a pole so that they can get the optimum catch. | Slide titled “Monitoring and Thresholds” contains a graph of percentage of moth capture versus the trap height in the tree. There is a bell-curve like effect, with 10.5 and 7.5 ft having the highest trap captures with a sharp decline when traps are placed higher or lower. To the right, a diagram of a tree shows the trap elevations used in the study compared to eye level. |
| And this is a graph that Vince Jones showed, and Mike Dure and Jay Brunner showed in a number of their talks over the years, and it shows the difference in trap catch when you had a really high density of traps on a pretty substantial size block. And the size of the bubble here is the difference in seasonal trap catch. And the orchard was relatively flat and relatively uniform, so they don’t think that that made a huge difference. So, there are 2 points here: is that if you just had one trap, let’s say this one right here. Well, this one right here, you might get a very different idea of what the population was in your orchard than if you had a trap right here. And that is one of the tricky parts about sampling. And the point that I will make is that the more traps you have that you can have an average of all of these different points, the more confident you are going to be of what your population is. | Slide titled “Trap Density vs Codling Moth Density” contains a graphical depiction of codling moth density in a field, with large blue circles denoting high codling moth density and small blue circles denoting low codling moth density. |
| So I did some experiments with sterile moths when I was working on this a few years ago, and one of the things I wanted to eliminate was the point in the phenology cycle or the unknown density. So, I controlled the density by releasing the same number every week in the exact same spot. And every single release was the same number of moths, and it was one row over and 20 feet to the West. So, this should have been really, really uniform, and it wasn’t. So, we had 3 different blocks here, and, as you can see, some of these traps at the upper ridge of the orchard always caught more moths. Some of these traps were actually relatively uniform, but they were released at the same rate as these traps down here and look at the difference in catch. So again, if you are trying to estimate codling moth density from data as variable as this, you would have a problem. | Slide titled “Trap Placement Influences Capture” contains a diagram of moth capture in three different blocks. This is shown for blocks which have no net and blocks that have partial nets. There is a large range in moth captures shown. Text outlines the weekly releases for partial net and no net blocks. |
| So, this is another graph that I like to show, and it looks like the emergence curve of the second generation. See, the first flight has ended, they’re starting to come out again. That’s not what it is. These are sterile moths, released at the exact same rate every week, 800 moths every single week. So, all of this variation right here is largely due to the weather that week. We had some cold, rainy days there, even though it was June. We had some cold, rainy days. This is up north. And then the weather got better and we started to catch more. But if you’re trying to make a decision at this point in time here, how different would your decision be if you saw that many moths versus that many moths. | Slide titled “Factors Influencing Traps: Weather” contains a plot of moths per trap per week versus the date, ranging from the 15th of June to the 24th of August. Much variation is seen in the trap captures over the range of dates. |
| So that is some of the intricacies of trapping. But I don’t want to discourage you from trapping. Despite this, just you need to bring in a lot of other information which is block history, fruit sampling, information from bands, historical data. All of those things should be brought in into your decision making, not just one trap in a 20 acre block. That’s what we’re really trying to avoid. The other thing is that in terms of using it for a threshold, especially for the first generation. My feeling is, you may as well just commit to controlling the first generation. There’s going to be very few situations where you don’t, and you will make your life better the rest of the season if you do a good job in the first generation. | Slide titled “Thoughts on Trapping” contains lists of appropriate and innapropriate uses of trapping date as well a reminder to control the first generation of codling moth for better results. |
| And that is a good segue into talking about insecticides. We’ve come a long way over the past 100 years or so in our control of codling moth, and the first thing you see is that we used to have pretty much one material at a time and usually it’s pretty toxic in one way or another. In about in the mid-2000s, or the early 2000s, we suddenly got a diversity of different modes of action. And that is actually really important for resistance management. At last, we had enough materials to actually put on a resistance management scheme, and then we had mating disruption on top of that to to help all of these materials along in terms of their efficacy and that’s when we were really able to do a decent job of resistance management. | Slide titled “Codling Moth Control with Insecticides: Diversity! The modern era” contains a flow chart of codling moth insecticides starting with arsenicals, then DDT, then Guthion, and then to a diversity of insecticide options in the modern day. |
| So, here is the program that was developed by Jay Brunner and his staff in oh, back in about the 2010s when we started to get these new insecticides. We also knew that Guthion was going to go away. And that happened. I think the last use of Guthion was in 2012. So, we were queued up and ready to have these new materials put into a slightly different program. And this is the delayed first cover. And that’s what Jay developed and the reason that that got developed is because we didn’t have Guthion anymore, we didn’t have a three-week residue. And if you wanted to get good coverage of the first generation, you probably needed 3 applications to cover the whole generation. | Slide titled “Codling Moth: Degree Day Timing” contains an example spray program for codling moth control which is based on degree day. |
| And his thinking was, is, use that ovicides up front when you have a lot of eggs, and then save those larvicides, for when you have the peak numbers of larvae. So, you got the most bang for your buck with a delayed first cover. It’s a little more optional in the second generation. You can still do ovicide, larvicide, larvicide in the second generation, or the third, for that matter, but is probably most critical in the first generation. Then, of course the way to start every season, mating disruption applied before bloom. | |
| So a little bit more detail about some old and some new insecticides, because, for the first time in many years, we have some new insecticides. I took over testing codling moth when Jay retired in 2015, and I haven’t had a lot new to talk about. You can sort of see them in order of age, the oldest at the top and the youngest at the bottom. But here are some of the candidate materials that we have used or will use for codling moth control. And the ones I want to focus on today are the newer ones, and that’s Plinazolin, and this is a new, repeat, new mode of action group from Sengenta. You’re probably gonna hear about that in meetings throughout the year. And then the other one that is not yet registered, I think– don’t quote me on this–I think they are looking at availability in 2025, with registration maybe late in 2024. And then the other new one, again, a completely different mode of action from anything we’ve seen in the past, is the peptides. I’m not gonna try to pronouce that entire thing, lets just call them, generically, the peptides of which Spear-Lep is the material that is available in tree fruit. | Slide titled “Codling Moth Insecticides (Old and New) contains a chart of codling moth insecticides along with their group and an example product. Two of the newer insecticides are circled: Plinazolin and Spear-Lep. |
| So with that, I want to dive into some of the trials that I have done. We did put out a trial in 2020 but it was a victim of Covid and never got off the ground. But in 2021, we were able to put out a trial, except for that the pressure was a lot lower than is typical for our research orchard. Like I said, we know how to grow a codling moth here at WSU. But for whatever reason, I think we’d sprayed out our research orchards the year before, we didn’t get a lot of pressure. The other odd thing about 2021 was the record high temperatures. We had 23 days–and this is just at our Sunrise Research Orchard–we had 23 days where the daily maximum exceeded 100 degrees Farhenheit. And as a result, we had some of the record high degree day accumulations in June and July. So in now way would I call this a typical year. | Slide titled “2021 Codling Moth Trial” contains two graphs. The first is a plot of temperature versus month in Sunrise Orchard 2021, with the max and min temperature for each day shown. The second is a bar graph of avergage daily degree day versus month which compares the 2011-2020 average to the 2021 season. |
| And I think when I come to the end of this, our conclusion will be that there is no such thing as a typical year. So here is the results of this trial, and again, I sort of hightlighted the Plinazolin. We looked at it. This was a three generation test, because, again, we were racking up the degree days, and we were looking at rotation schemes with different modes of action in different generations. So here’s Plinazolin for the first generation, followed by different combinations of materials we’ve been using for a few years. Here it is in the second generation and the third generation. And basically, there’s not a lot of difference between any of these programs. They all work. We actually got some pretty good performance out of programs that we’ve been doing for years. So, at least in our research orchard, we still get good control with existing materials. But Plinazolin is looking very very good, especially when we put it in the second generation. I don’t think it means that it can only be used then, that’s just the way that test came out. | Slide titled “2021 Codling Moth Trial” contains a bar graph of percent of damage after three generations of codling moth versus nine different spray programs. All programs were seen to significantly reduce damage compared to the control treatment, with the Plinazolin trials showing a large reduction, especially when used in the second generation. |
| Okay, so 2022. This was another unusual year. We had a famously cool and wet spring, which is just the kind of weather that codling moth hate to fly and mate in. So our pressure was again much lower than expected. But we came out at about six percent in the check, which would be a disaster for you, but is actually way too low for me. And the other challenge that we had in 2022 was that we had this teensy weensy little hail event at SRO which banged up our goldens almost beyond recognition. And that caused a problem with distinguishing codling moth damage. | Slide titled “2022 Codling Moth Trial” contains a photo of a damaged apple. Many pits and brown spots are seen on its skin. |
| Well, the deep entries weren’t hard to tell. You had that nice pile of frass on the outside of the apple. | An obvious codling moth entry point is highlighted on the apple along with the pile of frass next to it. |
| All of these here, I’m pretty sure were just hail marks. | Several other damaged areas on the apple are circled. |
| There’s a couple others that were just, well, was that a sting? Was that a hail mark? It got really hard to tell, especially when you are scanning thousands of fruit very quickly to try to get an estimate of damage. So at the end of the day, we only looked at entries that we were absolutely sure it was caused by a codling moth. | Another damaged area is circled, it is unclear whether this is hail damage or a codling moth sting. |
| And here is the results of our 2022 trial. And again, we see two different formulations of Plinazolin. The SC was looking a little sharper in this test, and I believe since this time Sengenta has decided to focus on the SC formulation. And again, very very comparable to what I would call a standard program, which is Altacor followed by Delegate. | Slide titled “2022 Codling Moth Trial” contains a bar graph of percentage of fruit damage versus four different spray programs. All the treatments showed reduction in damage compared to the control, with Plinazolin SC showing the lowest damage rates. |
| As I mentioned before, I’ve also looked at Spear-Lep, the new peptide insecticide for Lepidoptera. This material needs a BT to help get it through the gut wall of the insect. And while this was tested in the same block as the previous results that I just showed you, it was tested on the second generation only, and the first generation was just sort of allowed to run. So it got put out under really high pressure situations relative to that year. It still did a pretty good job of knocking down the amount of damage that we saw, but again, it got stuck in a high pressure corner of the block after a lot of buildup of the first generation had already happened. | Slide titled “2022 Codling Moth Trial” contains a bar graph of percentage of fruit damage versus the Spear-Lep treatment and the control treatment. The Spear-Lep treatment shows a large reduction in fruit damage compared to the control. |
| Okay, so 2023. We had time for two generations this past year, but I wanted to test the materials on what I felt like was a normal schedule, which is the delayed first cover. So I put an ovicide out as my first application, followed by two larvacides for the first generation. Then I just did a couple of larvacides for the second generation with a 14 day interval between the two larvacides. The one exception is this one right here. Plinazolin is believed to have ovicidal activity also. So instead of using a specific ovicide, we just used Plinazolin as our ovicide. So the first thing to notice about 2023, unlike previous years, is we had we had all of the codling moth pressure that a girl could ever want. We had like over 90 percent damage in our checks. And while that’s maybe a little more than I was hoping for, it really helps us sort out the treatments. So again, sort of color coding here, all of the treatments that have Plinazolin are in green and you can see they all did pretty well. We didn’t have a huge amount of separation in terms of the means, but this one here where Plinazolin was in the third generation did very well and a little less well when we had it up here, but still I would call it under this phenomenal amount of pressure, a very solid contender relative to our current codling moth materials. |
Slide titled “2023 Codling Moth Trial” contains a bar graph of percentage of fruit damage verus seven different spray programs. All of the spray programs show reduction in damage, with the Plinazolin treatments, shown in green, having particular reduction when used in the third generation. |
| So suffice it to say, I think this is, when this does get registered, I think this is going to be a, again, a solid contender for a place in our codling moth programs. And the fact that it will be a different mode of action makes it much more attractive for resistance management purposes. | |
| I’m going to switch gears a little bit and talk about cultural controls. We don’t talk about those very much. But there’s a couple of things that actually do come under this. | Slide titled “Tactics: Cultural Control” contains a diagram of a house in which the foundation is basic biological information such as ecology and taxonomy, and the pillars are tactics for control, such as biological and cultural. The cultural control pillar is highlighted and the definition of integrated pest managment appears beside it. |
| And the first is trunk banding, sanitation. It’s an oldie but a goodie. They’ve been doing it for like a century or more, and this can still work. There are still some people who are out there banding their trees, especially if you’re in an organic situation and you know you had a lot of damage in the fall. This is a way to level that playing field for the spring. | Slide titled “Cultural Control: Trunk banding/Infested Fruit Removal” contains photos of a tree banded with chemically treated cardboard and an apple that is infested with codling moth. To the right are reminder lists for trunk banding and fruit removal. |
| The other one is nets. They can be drape nets or they can be complete cages, either one. And my student and I studied this for a number of years. | Slide titled “Cultural Control: Net Enclosures” contains photos several different styles of drape nets including tree wrap, and top cover only. To the right is a list of postive traits of drape nets including the exclusion of vertebrates and insects and reducing heat stress on trees and workers. |
| And we found that no matter what we did, whether it was a large cage or a small cage, regardless of the year, we always got the least amount of damage inside that cage. Okay, I seem to be at the stopping point, but I also know that this is the break, so I’m gonna take a very slight liberty. Okay. Huh? Two minutes, okay. I’m gonna, Tianna says two minutes. | Slide titled “Do nets reduce codling moth damage” contains a bar graph of percentage of codling moth damage versus cage, airblast sprayer, and netted trees. This data is shown for the 2016 and 2017 season.The caged trial shows the least amount of fruit damage in both years. |
| And then of course we have sterile insect release. This has been used for a quarter century or more in Canada and is a proven technique and has brought their populations down over the years to the point where they really don’t have to spray very much for anything else. And it became available in Washington about 2019 and they’ve expanded their business through the state. | Slide titled “SIR: Sterile Insect Release” contains a photo of a sterile codling moth abdomen in which red dye can be seen. To the left, a bullet point list outlines the positive traits of sterile insect release. |
| When we first tested this, it looked like pretty promising results. The more moths we put on, the lower our fruit damage. That was good news and just what we’re hoping for. In later years, we didn’t see quite the same clear results, but there’s still no doubt in my mind that sterile moths can and do work. | Slide titled “Codling moth fruit damage: 1st Gen, Preharvest” contains a bar graph of percentage of codling moth damage versus a trial with three sterile insect releases, a trial with one release, and a control. The damage is divided into stings and entries, and the lowest overall damage was seen in the three release trial. |
| This was one of our success stories. We had a hot spot on the edge of the block when we first started, and we basically cleaned that up at the end of three years. So that is one potential application of sterile walls. | Slide titled “Case History: cleaning up a hot spot” contains a map of an orchard with dots representing individual codling moth stings and entries. The orchard map is show for both 2018 and 2020. The map for 2020 shows significanly less stings and entries than the 2018 one. |
| The other thing I want to talk about, last but not least, is a fixed spray system. And this was, again, work that was started by Keith Granger and Jay Bruner back in 2010 or thereabouts. And it’s basically, instead of using a tractor and sprayer, you plumb the pesticide application into your orchard. And I think there’s just a number of reasons why this is such a great idea. And the first is worker safety. That’s super important. You don’t have a sprayer out there in the middle of a cloud of pesticides. Perfect timing of sprays, prolonging the window in which you can put on a spray, reduce drift, reduce compaction, possibly better labor efficiency. There’s just a number of of efficiencies to be captured here. The real problem of course is is probably going to be pretty expensive. | Slide titled “Fixed Spray Systems: The Orchard of the Future” contains a list of advantages and disadvantages to the system, as outlined in the audio. Worker safety is highlighted in the advantages column. |
| Basically, it’s a pneumatic system. You’re taking air, shoving your solution through a line. | Slide titled “Fixed Spray Delivery System” contains an internal diagram of a solid set canopy delivery system as well as what the lines would look like in the field. |
| The line then fills a reservoir. And when the reservoir reaches a certain point, it discharges all that it has accumulated. And your spray goes out at precisely 100 gallons per acre every single time you do it. | Slide titled “Reservoir design modifications” show two diagrams of reservoir design, the existing design and the modified design. The modified design is more compact and minimizes post spray losses. |
| The one problem with the fixed spray system now, which I think can be addressed, is while total deposition is the same, coverage isn’t the same, and they’re a little bit challenged getting as much as they want on the underside of the leaf. They do very well on the upper side of the leaf. | Slide titled “Results: In-canopy spray performance” contains three bar graphs showing spray deposition and three bar graphs showing spray coverage. In each of these graphs, the solid set canopy delivery system is compared to an airblast sprayer. |
| Drift is almost eliminated with this because again, you don’t have a 200 mile an hour air blast shoving that spray up through the trees 40 feet above the tops of the trees and then over to whatever’s next to the trees. | Slide titled ” Off-target drift almost eliminated!” contains two graphs of deposition versus distance for aerial drift and drift losses to ground for the fixed spray and airblast sprayers. Drift is seen to be much lower for the fixed spray system. |
| And lastly, the engineers have been working on just saying, well, does this work? And in fact, at least in bioassay format, they have had really good luck in determining that they can get good control of coddling moth. And that’s going to be our litmus test of whether or not these spray systems are going to be a go for a Washington orchard. | Slide titled “Fixed Spray System: Codling Moth Control” contains a bar graph of a codling moth bioassay of larval mortality over 7 days for the fixed spray system, airblast treament, and a control. The airblast sprayer treatment and the fixed spray system both showed 100 percent larval mortality. |
| So with that, I would like to thank you all for your attention. | Thank you slide which contains funding, vendor, and sponsor information. |
YouTube Video Link: New Products and Approaches for Codling Moth Management
