Pennsylvania’s farmers have been buying a new, low-cost weapon to stop fruit worms whose first bite of the apple can cause big losses in the state’s annual orchard harvest of some 400,000 tons.
Since reducing pesticide use to protect the environment, orchard operators have been vulnerable to periodic outbreaks of the tiny larvae. To stymie the worms, Penn State entomologists and agricultural extension specialists came up with a simple device–a sticky box that smells like a female fruit moth–and a strategy to integrate the pest’s management into the harvest cycle.
Orchard growers in Snyder County have been demonstrating the device’s value as an early warning system. Originally funded by Penn State and the PA Horticulture Association, integrated pest management is an approach that Snyder County farmers are now providing for themselves.
“Eleven orchards are working together under a Penn State apple worm monitoring project,” says Jeff Mizer, manager of the program for Penn State’s Agricultural Extension Services. The growers are learning how to set the traps and monitor them for increases in numbers of male moths, which become stuck on a trap’s sticky surfaces. Elevated numbers of moths in the traps signal the start of an infestation.
When there’s an outbreak, the farmers apply pesticide–although in much smaller amounts than in the past, when chemicals were used for blanket protection before it was known whether the pests would appear.
“This is saving the farmers money, because pesticides are expensive, and now they use them only when and where needed,” says Ed Rajotte, professor of entomology at Penn State. “That raises profitability, and it’s also much better for the environment.”
It also saves growers the costly heartache of harvests rejected by U.S. Department of Agriculture inspectors, Rajotte says. The inspectors will fail an entire truckload, even when they discover boring worms inside a relatively small portion of the fruit being delivered.
Source: Penn State Extension Service, Ed Rajotta
Writer: Joseph Plummer
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