Codling Moth Control Part 2

Codling Moth Control Part 2

Codling Moth Control. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report.

Today we continue our look at aerosol pheromone dispensers being developed by WSU for use in the control of codling moth. Dr. Jay Brunner continues his talk about the units.

BRUNNER: So some of the tests that we conducted, that we've been in collaboration with commercial growers. If you test a pheromone you need at least 10 acres to get a reliable or reasonable effect and we work with growers that have very low codling moth populations, native populations - native populations so that they're not spraying over the top of our treatments. The we monitor in the middle of each block.

He says that they use sterile codling moths as part of the testing phase.

BRUNNER: Using these sterile moths gives us an advantage in that we can challenge each treatment with the same number of moths. And we've challenged these with the release with a large number of moths. There are females there but they're all sterile so half are males and half are females. And we've always tried to use a non pheromone control when you have 90% of the acreage treated with pheromones it's really difficult to get a true control because almost any non pheromone treated block we have is influenced in some way by pheromone treatments around it.

Brunner was speaking to a group of tree fruit producers at the annual Washington State Hort Convention in Wenatchee. More tomorrow.

That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.

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