2. Introduction
Nick Volesky
Vegetable IPM Associate, USU Extension
Education
• B.S. Horticulture (Sustainable Food Production)
• B.S. Applied Science (Diversified Agriculture)
Experience
• Commercial Vegetable Production
• Plant Pathology, Entomology
• Integrated Pest Management
3. Integrated Pest Management
combines a host of practices that
keep vegetable crops healthy while
minimally impacting human health,
the environment, or profits.
What is Integrated Pest Management?
Cultural Control
Mechanical Control
Biological Control
Chemical
Control
5. • Dead plant parts
• Changes in growth
• Changes in appearance
• Color
• Texture
• Evidence of a pest
• Actual insects
• Observed mechanical damage
• Secretions from the plant
• Damage pattern
• Recent weather records (sever freeze, late
frosts, hail storms, etc.)
Scouting for Pests
Symptoms Signs
6. Scouting Supplies
Beating Tray Sweep Net Hand Lens Yellow Sticky Trap
Field Notebook Collecting Tape Measure Field Guides
11. Beetle Management
Mulches Pheromone Lures/Traps
Monitor by using a tray or white
sheet of paper
Yellow sticky trap Row covers
Companion Planting
Trap Cropping
12. Caterpillars
Armyworms Family Noctuidae
Cutworms Family Noctuidae
Cabbage Looper Trichoplusia ni
Corn Earworm Helicoverpa zea
Diamondback Moth Plutella xylostella
Imported Cabbageworm Pieris rapae
Hornworms Family Sphingidae
abdomen
thorax
head
head capsule
jaws
13. Active Ingredients Product Names
pyrethrins
Evergreen, Pyganic, Tersus
Tersus
spinosad
Conserve, Entrust, Success
Success
Burkholderia spp. Venerate
Chromobacterium
subtsugae
Grandevo
azadirachtin
Aza-Direct, AzaGuard,
Azatin, Mold
spinetoram Radiant
indoxacarb Avaunt
tebufenozide Confirm
Caterpillar Management
Protective Collar Tilling Soil in the Fall
Hand Removal
Row Covers Pheromone Traps
So, what exactly IS Integrated Pest Management?
Integrated Pest Management (IPM): “A comprehensive approach to pest control that uses a combined means to reduce the status of pests to tolerable levels while maintaining a quality environment.”
What are the goals of an IPM Program?
Optimize profits (over the long term).
Sustain resources (agricultural or natural; over the long term).
Rational use of pesticides.
Reduce environmental contamination and costs involving our soil, ground water, surface water, pollinators, wildlife, endangered species.
Utilize natural biological controls — conserve and augment; use selective pesticides, proper timing of applications.
Minimize pesticide resistance problems.
Minimize pest resurgence and secondary pest outbreaks (often caused by elimination of natural enemies with pesticides).
Food safety — reduce residues of pesticides on food products.
Human safety — rely on pest management tactics that are safe for ourselves and others
• Aphids are a diverse family with many species that inflict similar plant damage. They are small, soft-bodied insects that suck sap from plant tissues. • Aphid feeding can distorts and stunt plants• Aphids are prevalent on vegetables during the spring and summer, you might find them in these large colonies. There’s both winged and non-winged forms.• Scout for aphids, by looking at the base of plants, the bracts or flowers, at the nodes, or look where leaves might be curled. (Aphids like these small microenvironment)
• Sometimes, you might observe white/clear skins casted by the aphids (sometimes mistaken for whiteflies)
• Sometimes, the presence of ants on vegetables can be an indicator of aphids, because they’re feeding on the secreted honeydew from aphids.
To manage aphids, you want to scout frequently. Aphid colonies build up very quick. It is important to scout your leafy greens least twice weekly (when they are young and growing rapidly.
Look on the underside of leaves where aphids congregate, and look for ant activity (as that can be a sign of aphids).
Once aphid feeding causes leaf curling, it is more difficult to reduce aphid numbers. Greatest damage occurs when temperatures are warm, but not hot (65° to 80°F).
Management:
Avoid excess fertilization. (Aphid densities tend to be higher on plants that have succulent, vigorous growth).
Apply row covers. (Physical exclusion)
Remove/destroy plant debris post-harvest. Remove/destroy nearby weeds that can serve as an alternate host or virus reservoir.
Encourage natural enemies such as lady beetles, lacewings, syrphid (sir-fid) flies, and parasitic wasps. If you purchase these from a biocontrol company they could be very affective in an enclosed high tunnel or greenhouse structure. Outdoors, they may just scatter.
Many aphid species have developed resistance to insecticides, so we recommend the use of insecticides sparingly. (Not popular for consumers)
Organic insecticides include products with active ingredients like pyrethrins (pai-ree-thrunzs), azadirachtins (ah-zat-er-actins), acetamiprids (as-e-tami-prids), species of the burkholderia pathogen, and the bacterium Chromobacterium subtsugae (chrom-o-bacterium subts-u-gae). Insecticides that use insecticidal soap or horticultural oils are popular.
• True bugs are insects in the order “Hemiptera”. They’re characterized by their piercing-sucking mouthparts.
• In terms of vegetable pests this mainly include squash bugs and stink bugs. But there are others.
• Because they have similar characteristics, different species can be mixed up. I posted photos of the Western Conifer Seed Bug, Squash Bug, BMSB, and Western Conenose Bug as people seem to mix these up to more.
• When scouting for stink bugs and squash bugs, you want to look for their egg masses on host foliage. When they nymphs hatch, they aren’t able to fly, so they will stick around that host plant.
• Squash bug adults and nymphs, tend to be around the base of plants where it’s protected. This includes under mulches.
• When squash bugs feed, they cause plant wilting which is a symptom.
• When stink bug feed on the fruit, they inject an enzyme which can cause fruit distortion or “clouding”. So this is another sign to look out for.
Monitoring
It is important to monitor for flea beetles on susceptible plants, especially in the spring. Check seedlings at least two times a week until they grow out of their vulnerable stage.
In mature plants, treatment may be necessary when flea beetle populations are high, or on plants that are more susceptible to feeding, such as leafy greens.
Sticky traps are a monitoring tool that provide a guideline of when beetles are present and in what quantity, but are ineffective in reducing populations. Either yellow or white sticky traps can be used. They should be placed around susceptible host plants just after planting but before seedlings emerge.
Management
Row covers are used to cover plants to create a physical barrier against flea beetle adults.
Plants that are highly attractive to flea beetles can serve as a trap crop. Trap crops lure flea beetles away from the desired (cash) crop, and can be destroyed or sprayed to decrease the flea beetle population. Plant the trap crop about 2 to 4 weeks before the cash crop so that the larger, well-maintained trap crop will be more attractive to flea beetles. Some examples of successful trap crops for flea beetles include Chinese southern giant mustard, radish, pac choi, and pacific gold mustard. Once flea beetles start to feed on the trap crop, their populations can be managed.
Companion plants can confuse, repel, or block insect pests from finding host plants. Bunching green onions, dill, and marigolds are a few examples of companion crops that have been used for flea beetle management. Intercropping or planting companion plants next to host plants will enhance plant diversity and make the desired crop less apparent to the beetles. Companion plants can also be used in combination with trap crops to increase success with pest control. The companion plant repels flea beetles from host plants, while the trap crop attracts the flea beetles. This is called a “push-pull” strategy.
• In Utah, we have a variety of caterpillar pests. Caterpillars are the larvae of the moth and butterfly species.
• Common caterpillar pest species include hornworms, tomato fruit worms, imported cabbage worms, diamondback moths, cabbage loopers, armyworms, and cutworms.
• All these caterpillars have chewing mouthparts which can cause serious damage to foliage. Here a cutworm clipped the entire stem. Here are a caterpillar tunneled inside a cabbage head.• Caterpillars are easy to scout for and find– especially if you use a beating tray to dislodge them from a plant or are observant for the feeding damage.
Management
Keep your farm or garden weed-free (especially lambsquarters and wild mustards), these weeds can serve as alternate host attracting adult moths
Till soil in the fall to disrupt the overwinter pupae or larvae stage
Implement row covers to physically exclude moths from laying their eggs.
Smaller operations protect their seedlings with cardboard collars, to prevent cutworms from clipping
Pheromone traps can be used to survey and monitor populations in a large area.
Best management, is physically hand remove caterpillar and throw them into soapy water.
Application of synthetic or organic insecticides; Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) (bah-cill-us thur-e-gen-sis) and spinosad are very effective on caterpillar species, especially in early instars.
• “Leafminer” commonly describes the larval or maggot stage of various small yellow-and-black flies in the order Diptera.
• There are several host crops, but within vegetable crops, leafy greens tend to be the most common.• The larva will hatch on the host leaf, and begin feeding in between the 2 epidermis of the leaf.• The initial feeding damage will be a very subtle line, but as the larvae and plant mature, the damage will become more severe.
• This year, we are especially interested in looking for leafminer species on onion or garlic crops. Our program is apart of a national survey looking for the invasive Allium leafminer.So, we definitely want your help keeping an eye out for it.
• Other fly pest species include the Seedcorn maggot, onion maggot, and cabbage maggot. These larval maggots will feed on germinating seeds or roots in the soil. This can cause an entire plant to wilt and die. So those are symptoms you want to look out for when scouting.• Other fly pests species include Seedcorn maggots, onion maggots, or cabbage maggots. These
Check transplants for signs of leaf mines and white stippling before planting; destroy infested plants.
Place a floating row cover (lightweight plant fabric) (Fig. 8) over plants to inhibit adult flies from entering and laying eggs.
Immediately after the final harvest, remove plants and deeply plow crop residues to remove food sources and inhibit pupal development.
Parasitic wasps pierce the soft body of a leafminer larva to deposit an egg. When the egg hatches, the developing parasitoid gradually consumes the leafminer larva. These can be commercially purchased from bio control companies.
Insecticides are challenging to use due to the larvae being somewhat protected by the foliage.
Plant pathogenic bacteria can cause leaf spots and blights in many vegetable crops. These diseases are most often caused by species of Pseudomonas (soo-duh-mow-nuhs) and Xanthomonas (zan-thu-mow-nuhs) and tend to begin as small water-soaked spots that eventually turn brown. A yellow halo may or may not be present. In severe cases, spots can coalesce and destroy entire leaves. Because bacterial infection of the leaf tissue is limited by leaf veins, bacterial leaf spots are often angular in shape; however, this may not always be the case, there’s also fungal diseases that can causes spots.
Pectobacterium is another genus of bacteria that we see causing problems on a lot of our vegetable crops. It’s soilborne and thrives in warm and wet conditions.So whenever you’re scouting and see standing water in a field, that’s a great place to look for disease.
Fungi constitute the largest number of vegetable crop pathogens and are responsible for a range of serious diseases. Most vegetable diseases are caused by fungi. They damage plants by killing cells and/or causing plant stress. Sources of fungal infections are infected seed, soil, crop debris, nearby crops and weeds. Fungi are spread by wind and water splash, and through the movement of contaminated soil, animals, workers, machinery, tools, seedlings and other plant material. They enter plants through natural openings such as stomata and through wounds caused by pruning, harvesting, hail, insects, other diseases, and mechanical damage.
As you can see from these example photos, fungi can give a wide variety of signs and symptoms.
This include powdery mildews, wilting, fruit rots, and mold growth.
Finding fungal diseases in the garden can be easy, but identifying them can be trickier.This could require culturing a sample in our lab or using a microscope.
There are numerous viruses found on the different plants grown in commercial fields as well as in the home vegetable garden. Most viruses are spread by insects (usually aphids, thrips, white flies, and leafhoppers) and can also be seed borne or spread by contact with our hands and equipment.
When infected, young plants rarely grow to harvest size- they are stunted, deformed, & may have a mosaic/mottled appearance.
Sometimes, based off the host crop and the symptoms – we can identify the virus. However, sometimes we would have to run a genetic PCR test on a plant sample to determine the specific virus or strain of a virus.
In a large field setting, you can identify a virus outbreak – BCTV example.