Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

Discussion of Progress by Objectives: Objective 3: Development of Biological Control Systems for Pecan Arthropod Pests Shapiro-Ilan: 2007 fungus trials against pecan weevil in small plots gives good mortality; trunk and ground applications of fungus was done; trunk spray gave best kill compared with ground application; time to mortality on weevils was explored; large plot fungus test gave 60% pecan weevil damage in the control and 50% damage in the fungus treated test; 2 border rows treated with carbaryl had 30% damage; future questions fungus carryover; time for weevils to die; interaction of carbaryl + fungus. Metarhizium kills fast but does not cause as much mortality as B. bassiana. Longterm suppression of pecan weevil using microbial control tested using larvae in buried pots and treated with nematodes; Paecilomyce fumosoroseus fungi was tested against pecan aphids (blastospores and conidida). Harris asked if 50% culls were feeding+oviposition damage? Shapiro-Ilan - no just looking for larval damage; did not look for weevil feeding damage. Harris - damage rating used edible and inedible nuts, inedible but no larvae was higher in treated than in nontreated; nut integrity compromised by weevil (probably through feeding) but no oviposition. Weevil may be causing feeding damage but not as much oviposition damage due to weevil death. 50% infestation or greater leads to weevils not finding nuts and leads to emigration. Hard to manage that infestation. Luttrell: Neozygites on aphids? Dutcher: Entomopthorales found everywhere there is pecan. Luttrell: natural epizootic seen in cotton was not caused by any sprayed neozygites species. Dutcher: Western pecan predatory mite fits well with pecan. Reid: is it persistent? Dutcher: Yes. Ree: when released Dutcher: July later part of season. Mizell: commercially available Dutcher: yes, Rincon vitova, easy to disperse; put on 1 tree per acre; takes 4-5 weeks to disperse across the orchard. No late season scodrch mites during the late season int treated orchards. Reid: impact of miticides. Dutcher: difficult to assess in the field. Dutcher: lacewing pheromone + HPV; working with Kamal Chauhan (ARS) and ARS Byron; greater catch in pheromone + HPV than pheromone alone.; Harris - why not volatiles from honedew? Seems that would give the response we want 10 -14 days before aphid outbreaks. Harris: water sensitive cards to measure honeydew production by bma for the season (Jessica honaker). Measured aphid densities, ne density and honeydew. Amt of honeydew per variety same ; what is assoc of natueal enemy, aphid and honeydew. Cheyenne produces more honeydew; different rates of honeydew produced by different varieties; Cheyenne susceptible to bma; supports idea of risk with Cheyenne to bma and ne's can't/won't control them; Kiowa and Pawnee dont justify control based on energy loss. Reid: George ray found perfect cultivar for texas cheyenne. Harris - proprietary program written to scan droplet cards. Luttrell - spread factor from overlapping droplets? Assuming a correspondence with pesticide spray result;probably underestimating honeydew by a small amount. How should we view aphids in terms of their pest threat. Knutson: did not find ne's with more honeydew: Harris: ratio of honeydew to ne is poorer on Cheyenne but closer on kiowa and pawnee. Fewer aphids on pawnee; efficiency of attracting aphids is better on kiowa and pawnee; Knutson - is there a limit to the predators you can pull in? Shapiro-Ilan: microbials working with storage pests; plodia susceptible to nematodes; metabolites from nematode bacteria are antagonistic to pecan pathogens; leaf applications showing suppression of scab. Mizell: grad student working on crape myrtle aphids; aphid has no parasites; aphid-host plant interactions; geospatial technology; optimizing a trap for harmonia 3 inch mailing tube 36 inches long and painted safety yellow is equivalent to a 3 gallon pot attracts many harmonia adults; trap can enhance harmonia densities in small plots; can fool harmonia to move from edge traps along the diagonal to the center 10 m active distance. Traps in a grid can be used to find beetles across landscape in time and space. Insects move through the landscape by moving in relation to structure. Harmonia movement not related to aphids. Harris - how nes locate aphids in pecan; ne's come from outside of orchard; not enough seasonal aphids to sustain nes in pecan; 200 spider spp. In pecan. Stochastic conditions prior to aphid outbreak governed by spiders. Ground spiders and canopy spiders. Spider species partitioned from canopy to ground? Six species in both; remaining species either on the ground or in the canopy. Spiders not an effective strategy for groundcovers; not affected by groundcovers; 100 species of obligate predators not seen to partition in the canopy(but prob. Do). Spiders are really important preceding aphid outbreak. How does one do those studies? Work with dave richman partitioning among species; every species feeds throughout the year. Riezig - spiders in lime in florida has close correspondence with spider on pecan rather than on nearby postoak savanna. Research on rowcrops does not mesh with spider work on pecan. No information known about impact of insecticides on spiders. Knutson: release of trichogramma? Any more information? Reid: organic growers always have interest. Knutson: can find trichogramma on pnc eggs. Harris: possible to have a pnc-entrained strain of trichogramma. Ree: FYI. Organic pecan grower doing a study on bats against pnc on pecan. Knutson: Anybody releasing beneficials? Very few at best. OBJECTIVE 2. Improved control systems for pecan arthropod pests: Dutcher: Rynaxypyr 2-3 oz per acre; will test at an orchard in Midville, GA 2008; very few insects this year - 2007 - neonicotinoids some problems this year, worked in some not in others against aphids. Systemics losing some of impacts found in past. Temik gone, expect more imidacloprid application. Harris - isn't the whole scenario exacerbated by cheap pyrethroids? Pyrethroids in early season against pnc with intent of using imidacloprid later. Muegge - using intrepid early season; Dutcher- using lorsban early season; Harris - move growers from lorsban to intrepid or spinosad, pyrethroids where patents are off are dirt cheap. More likely to use with zinc spray; Lewis - same in NM to use pyreth early season (about $5/acre). Luttrell - is resistance documented with bioassays or just field observations? Dutcher - yes. Dutcher and Htay. Lewis - developing neonicotinoid titer baseline in xylem. Harris: spraying bma prolongs the assoc of bma and pecan; leaf becomes conditioned and then stops feeding; ypa comes in later, can cause defoliation; Ree: residual of insecticides against sb's and leaffooted bugs. Dipped clusters. Very little mortality after 4 days. Endigo did good against brown sb; everything decent against lf bug. Southern green easier to control. Juan Lopez doing vial test and my work complemented it with field data. Treatments applied at past shellhardening; bugs collected off of weeds. Sb species don't track each other; some orchards mostly lf and others euschistus problems. Mizell - trap being used for euschistus but need something for green and s green. Harris - can induce diapause termination with a chemical. May provide early, suicidal emergence. Treat hibernacula stage to terminate winter diapause in early spring. Knutson: encapsulated pnc pheromone; not a good way to get pheromone into trees and cost is a problem. Harris: NRI submitted; cost is high. Dutcher: Pitfall traps for prionus borers, pecan weevils. Also catches nut curculio. Traps placed in herbicide strips. Tested with and without baits (nuts, crown gall). Fluon to prevent escape. Cottrell - discussed work related to feeding by the BPA, the seasonal impact of pecan cultivar on BPA survival and the impact of plant growth regulators on BPA development. OBJECTIVE 1. Improved systems to monitor pecan arthropod pests: Knutson: pnc casebearer prediction system available on the web (http://pecankernel.tamu.edu). Will be called PNCforecast.tamu. Available for use in Texas but Oklahoma data will be added soon; put together by john jackman; can also run a prediction when you have first moth capture. Harris - why not full phenology agreement with the models?-first pnc entry precedes 90% oviposition by 1 week. Muegge - field data has not validated that observation. Muegge - data for model collected for model from nonsprayed orchards. 9 data sets used to build the model; 13 data sets used to validate the model. Ree - how long is nut entry after 1st trap capture? Knutson - model gives grower a better understanding of the pnc oviposition curve and whether to control. Harris - still not sure how early males precede females. Luttrell - where does temp data come from? Knutson - data is from Ted Wilson. Other Business: Reid: 2009 National Pecan Conference will be held at the Noble foundation. Shapiro-Ilan: nominated Muegge to be secretary; motion accepted: Muegge will be secretary at the 2009 meeting. Site selection committee: Bill Reid, David and Ted Site recommendation for 2009 will be decided through e-mail discussion. Reid: In conjunction with national pecan conference at Noble foundation in July 2009?? Committee will decide and e-mail s-1017 for approval. Project rewrite to be done in 2009 Shapiro-Ilan: pecan pest management book project: Will this be a nut or pecan book? The upcoming pecan conference may be a chance to involve horticulturists. Mizell: you are encouraged to proceed. Mizell: potential grant proposals. Discussion centered on SB and how they relate to other crops. S-1017 has potential to interact with other crops. This should be in the project re-write that we collaborate to address stink bugs attacking pecan, a common problem for our producers. Need monitoring tools, economic thresholds, insecticide efficacy. Ree: Sharpshooter attacking pecan - applied for grant. Looking at Xylella. Harris: Mexican PNC Grant to look at genetics of the Mexican strain of PNC. Southern region grant won't support field studies across pecan belt. Money for traps and lures has been available to peer cooperators. Phenologies and genetics across the belt with both pheromone strains (regular and Mexican). Can't correlate trap catch with % infestation. Intitial aflp data groups the Mexican strain but there is a diverse response of regular pnc. Not a different species in mexio but we have different response to pheromone, different strain. Harris led a thorough discussion of the IPM-PIPE and the recent grant received to work on pecan nut casebearer. Meeting concluded at 3:30PM

The report states accomplishments throughout.

None to report.