Agriculture IPM

Doug Walsh, Ph.D.
Environmental and Agrichemical
Education Specialist
email: dwalsh@wsu.edu

Doug is involved with IPM research and extension on crops including apples, asparagus, carrots, mint, stone fruits, hops, grapes, poplars, and onions. His projects also include pest management issues associated with riparian restoration. Doug is based at WSU's Irrigated Agriculture Research and Extention Center (IAREC) in Prosser.

Doug serves as the statewide IPM coordinator, developing annual and 5-year plans of work for implementation of integrated pest management strategies in Washington State; as an ex officio Commissioner on the Washington State Commission on Pesticide Registration, assisting in the review of pest management research projects for funding; and as the Washington State Liaison to the USDA IR-4 project for minor crop pesticide registration, attending prioritization workshops and conducting field research. Doug's Environmental and Agricultural Entomology Laboratory (EAEL) serves as the Field Research Center for EPA Region 10, comprising Eastern Oregon, Eastern Washington, and most of Idaho.

Doug earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology from the University of California at Santa Cruz and a Ph.D. in entomology from the University of California at Davis. Doug's areas of expertise include acarology, agrichemicals, and economic entomology.

Holly Ferguson, Ph.D.
Extension IPM
Coordinator Specialist
email: hferguson@wsu.edu

Holly is based at WSU's Irrigated Agriculture Research and Extention Center (IAREC) in Prosser. She supervises the ongoing research at the Environmental and Agricultural Entomology Laboratory (EAEL) and is responsible for coordinating local, statewide, and regional IPM projects in support of a wide variety of commodities including tree fruits, mint, wheat, potato, timothy hay, carrots, juice grapes, and wine grapes.

Extension activities include authoring the annual IPM report for Washington State, assisting in development of outreach materials including web pages and extension bulletins, and making oral and poster presentations to a diverse group of agricultural stakeholders in Washington State and beyond, including grape growers, home gardeners, tree fruit growers, horse owners, hay growers, pesticide applicators, and university and ARS researchers. Holly is also active in grantwriting and funding acquisition.

Current and recent research activities include assessing mint growers' pest management practices, examining control of overwintering cutworms in vineyards via attract and kill bait stations, conducting efficacy trials for new miticides in timothy hay, conducting a lepidopteran survey in mint, and surveying Peristenus parasitism of Lygus bug nymphs.

Holly earned a Bachelor of Science degree in economic biology from Clemson University and Master of Science and Ph.D. degrees in entomology from Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA. Her agricultural pest management background is diverse, having worked on pests of cotton, soybean, and small grain on the East Coast before moving to the West Coast to work on the codling moth in apple. In addition, she is becoming quite the expert in the management of the flies pestering her horses residing at her ranchette.

Urban IPM