Resistance: Futile?
While Star Trek and gaming fans may relate to the phrase “Resistance is futile,” managing pesticide resistance doesn’t have to be a hopeless battle. With knowledge, planning, the right tools, and sometimes a little help from Mother Nature, grape growers can do a lot to forestall resistance to fungicides. Extension Viticulturist Michelle Moyer has been on the speaker circuit throughout Washington (and into Oregon and California) discussing fungicide resistance management in wine grapes, specifically relating to powdery mildew control.
This key issue in grape production was the focus of a stakeholder meeting in December in Napa Valley, where Moyer met with growers, consultants, chemical companies, and other extension specialists to discuss the meaning and manifestation of fungicide resistance and how the industry should go about product stewardship in 2018 and beyond. Moyer’s outreach has been highlighted in several recent articles in Good Fruit Grower magazine: Resistance rising for powdery mildew, Grape prices, fungicide resistance likely heading up, Scouting strategies.
When Are Two Tomatoes Better Than One?
When you’re grafting a market-desirable scion (top part of the plant) to a rootstock with superior production characteristics (e.g., disease resistance, stress tolerance, high yield), that’s when! It’s an age-old technique for enhanced production in eggplant, melons, and other crops as well.
Vegetable Extension Specialist Carol Miles and her team recently developed a guide for hosting a vegetable grafting workshop. This “Train the Trainer” document includes notes, ideas, and suggested approaches for presenters as well handouts for participants. The guide was tested in a two-hour workshop conducted by Graduate Research Assistants Pinki Devi and Abigail Attavar on February 9, 2018 at WSU Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center (NWREC), Mount Vernon. Four trainees attended the event and provided feedback for revising and improving the beta version of the guide.
Many months of work will come to fruition soon when Miles’ team’s online Vegetable Grafting Manual becomes available. In the meantime, extensive information is available on the NWREC Vegetable Research and Extension’s Grafting Vegetables website, which will also provide links to the grafting workshop guide and manual upon their completion.
What’s Bugging Your Vegetables?
Regional Vegetable Specialist Tim Waters probably has the answer. Waters has been making vegetable IPM outreach presentations over the past several months, at venues including the Great Lakes Fruit and Vegetable Expo in Michigan, the Southwest Ag Summit in Arizona, and a wide range of meetings across Washington and Oregon.
Topics included:
- management of Lygus and other important potato pests
- common carrot pest and disease identification and management
- managing thrips and Iris yellow spot virus in onions
Another typical winter outreach activity for Waters is working one-on-one with individual onion, potato, and carrot producers in the Columbia Basin to formulate IPM strategies for their specific farms. This winter has been no exception. Waters’ hands-on work with individuals and groups, from farmers to crop consultants to Master Gardeners to agricultural students is the foundation of the WSU Extension IPM Team’s outreach to vegetable row crop producers in the state’s key agricultural region east of the Cascades.
Talking ‘Bout Bees with EPA
Alfalfa seed growers throughout the West have learned to count on Washington State Extension Entomologist Doug Walsh for IPM strategies in their crop. He presented Enhancing and Protecting Populations of Alfalfa Seed Pollinators (pdf) to growers from California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming at the annual Western Alfalfa Seed Growers Winter Conference in San Antonio, Texas in January.
One of Walsh’s most important outreach activities is educating and informing policy-makers about the unique needs of this crop so critical to the nation’s livestock and dairy industries. Alfalfa produced for its seed involves a delicate balancing act between preserving the pollinators essential for seed set and controlling the crop’s #1 pest, Lygus bug. Both are active at the same time in the crop cycle. Walsh, along with key grower-cooperator Mark Waggoner, took part in the National Alfalfa and Forage Alliance’s DC Fly-In in February. They met with staff at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to discuss IPM, specialty pollinator protection, and access to critical crop protection tools for alfalfa produced for seed. Documents recently produced by Walsh’s team, including a Pest Management Strategic Plan (pdf) (PMSP) and a Managed Pollinator Protection Plan (pdf) (MP3) for alfalfa seed, helped drive home the point that crop protection tools are necessary to ward off harmful pests, but bee safety is a top priority for alfalfa seed farmers.
Hold the Mustard!
In addition to planning and conducting the annual Wheat Academy in Pullman and making presentations throughout the winter on weed management, herbicide resistance, and other issues of concern to Pacific Northwest grain growers, Weed Scientist Drew Lyon recently released a new Extension publication. Integrated Management of Mustard Species in Wheat Production Systems, co-authored with WSU’s Ian Burke and University of Idaho’s Joan Campbell, takes a proactive approach to controlling blue mustard, flixweed, and tumble mustard.
The 9-page, peer-reviewed publication on control of mustard weeds was released in February and is available as a free PDF download. It contains color photographs to aid in weed identification, discusses rates and timing of specific herbicide applications, and emphasizes the importance of early-season control of these persistent weed species.
What’s Hot in Hops
In January, Research and Extension Communication Specialist Sally O’Neal presented Integrated Pest Management of Arthropods on Hops: 2017 Report (pdf) at the American Hop Convention in Palm Desert, California. Over 500 hop growers, merchants, brewers, and other industry stakeholders from across the U.S. and beyond attended this year’s conference to exchange ideas and discuss topics including IPM.
O’Neal’s presentation included accomplishments by hop research director Doug Walsh and a team of collaborators across WSU and several other universities over the preceding year. Topics included miticide and insecticide efficacy field trials, monitoring methods, impacts on beneficial organisms, miticide resistance management, and interactions between plant nutrition and IPM.
Presentations were also made to the Washington Hop Industry annual meeting earlier in January by Doug Walsh and PhD student Adekunle Adesanya. Adesanya’s poster on acaracide resistance in hop fields (pdf) was presented at the American Hop Convension.
Spreading the Word about Shellfish
Pacific County Extension Director Kim Patten developed one of the nation’s first shellfish IPM programs. Headquartered at WSU’s Long Beach Research and Extension Unit (LBREU), this program not only develops IPM recommendations and conducts educational outreach for shellfish producers, but also regularly hosts tours for agencies (e.g., state and federal regulatory officials, Army Corps of Engineers) and other interested parties to familiarize them with the unique problems faced by a marine-based industry located in an ecologically sensitive estuarine environment. Helping regulators understand the challenges faced by producers of any commodity helps keep the channels of communication open for the benefit of all.
The Washington Department of Ecology recently denied a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit for the pesticide imidacloprid on oyster and clam beds to control burrowing shrimp, a major pest in shellfish production. Despite a focus in recent years on nonchemical methods to help manage the surge in populations of this pest, chemical intervention remains an important component in the shellfish IPM toolkit. The loss of imidacloprid as an option could prove devastating to Washington’s shellfish industry and the local economies in Pacific and Grays Harbor counties. The WSU IPM team remains hopeful that a history of mutual respect, open communication, and dedication to protecting the maritime ecosystem will result in a sustainable solution.
Video Increases Ramorum Blight Awareness
Urban IPM Director Carrie Foss continued her successful series of training and educational videos by producing Ramorum Blight: A Washington Story. Phytophthora ramorum is the causal agent of ramorum blight, also known as Sudden Oak Death. The pathogen gained national attention for impacting millions of acres of coastal California woodlands in an epidemic that is now considered uncontrollable.
P. ramorumcan infect many species of plants, including rhododendrons, camellias, viburnum, kalmia, and Pieris. Currently, the only way to confirm its presence and make a subsequent diagnosis is with laboratory tests. Foss and her staff have been training licensed pesticide applicators to be on the lookout for suspicious symptoms.The video was shown at 11 western Washington training sessions this winter, reaching 1500 individuals.
The video tells the story of a P. ramorum detection at Bloedel Reserve, a forest garden on Bainbridge Island, and how Foss’s Urban IPM program and other departments and individuals at WSU’s Puyallup Research and Extension Center worked successfully with regulators including WSDA and USDA-APHIS to mitigate the disease and prevent further spread.
Grassroots BMSB Awareness
Tree fruit growers and researchers are braced for a brown marmorated stink bug (BMSB) invasion of Washington, but experience in other regions shows that the first people who see them are homeowners. So Tree Fruit IPM Extension Specialist Betsy Beers and her team extended an already robust awareness program to the general public by setting up an informational booth at the Wenatchee Valley Farmer’s Market.
Beers and graduate students Adrian Marshall and Josh Milnes handed out BMSB identification cards, answered questions, and showed specimens of BMSB along with other stink bug species to help people distinguish between native stink bugs and the exotic invader. Individuals were encouraged to photograph any suspected BMSB and email the photo for positive identification along with the address where it was found. This information is added to the WSU Tree Fruit Research and Extension Center (TFREC) BMSB location database in order to keep a record of new areas being invaded, and population levels where it is already known to occur.
The booth was popular with adults and children, and resulted in several samples being submitted to expand the location database and increase understanding of this potentially devastating agricultural pest. For more information, go to the TFREC BMSB home page.