Navel Orange Worm Damage A Mixed Bag

Navel Orange Worm Damage A Mixed Bag

Patrick Cavanaugh
Patrick Cavanaugh
A very popular title by Charles Dickens is how scientists described this year's navel orange worm pressure.

“It's a Tale of Two Cities,” said Joel Siegel, a USDA ARS entomologist based in Parlier, (Fresno County), with a big focus on the number one pest in nut crops.

If you were in pistachios, once again, there was amazing whole integrity and the pressure in pistachios was very, very low. The crop has wonderful quality. I think the nuts are larger than last year. Everyone should be very, very happy.

Now for that other city, we're talking almonds now. “For almonds, it's much more of a mixed bag in that from the people I spoke to, if you divide the central Valley into three zones, north, central and south and we say Madera's South, this is South Valley, navel orange worm damage to nonpareil almonds was actually lower this year than it was last year,” noted Siegel.

“Roughly from the people I spoke to at the processors, they figure around 15 or 16% of the nonpareil nut meat were above 2% damage. In contrast, in the central zone and the northern zone, damage was higher and they average probably 20% of the loads and the Non-Pareil nut meats are above 2%, which is considered serious damage,” noted Siegel.

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