 Good afternoon everybody. My name is Aisayal. I am a small fruit entomologist at University of Georgia. And today I am going to talk about insect management for commercial strawberry production. In today's talk, we will discuss season at a glance tests, which tests occur what time of the year for strawberries. Then their management again will take a season at a glance look at their management options that we have. Then I will get discussed a few select pests in detail in terms of their biology and management. At the end, I will cover some aspects of pollinator management, which obviously are important in strawberry production systems. So when we look at a sort of a season at a glance, the pests of strawberries, starting with the transplant cutworms and aphids are important here at this stage of strawberries. And when you will look at this season at a glance slide, the green leaf shows that they feed on leaves. Strawberry shows they feed on fruit or flowers and these sticks will show that they feed on stems or branches of strawberries. So cutworms of course feed on stems as well as foliage if they are sucking pests and they suck primarily on the leaves. Moving on into winter, sort of later part of winter, two-spire spider mites they start, they all go all the way through flowering into fruit group growth period. They feed on foliage of the strawberries, then trips also they feed on flowers for the most part during flowering until initial fruit growth period as well. Strawberry clipper again feeds on flowers and sometimes smaller fruits. Also, if it's again are important this time of the blueberry growing season. Then we as new one lady like us bugs on especially on day neutral strawberries come into play early through starting with early fruit growth stage going all the way to harvest. Then we during the harvest, we have serious issues including set beetles, corn earworms, and spotted winged drosophila. Spotted winged drosophila has become more important for strawberries recently than it has been in the past as compared to some other berry crops where it has been key pest ever since it was detected in the mainland US. So now when we look at a management of those pests instead of a season at a glance look. When we look at post planting fall to early to mid-winter, crickets are important. We do have a couple options to spray cutworms. Cyclamen mites are important. We do have some miteside options, fire ants, obviously we can use those bits that are available here. And this screen that I am showing you now it comes directly from Southeast Small Fruit Consortium Strawberry IPM Guide. And a number of researchers from the region that get together every year to update this guide. So this is one of the best resources for you to learn about pest and disease management for strawberries. I highly recommend I'll share. I'll show you the main screen and link to access that in the end. So and then two spotted spider mites obviously we have a number of miteside options. Then we move on to pre harvest or bloom time late winter to early spring. If it's fire ants, flower trips, slugs and snails, strawberry clippers, two spotted spider mites. These are major pest, insect pest or other pest issues of strawberries and this slide does list options that we have to control them. Then we moved into the harvest period. Fire ants obviously still become issue, sap beetles, slugs and snails have become serious issues if we don't manage the moisture in the fields. Spotted when the safflower obviously is is one of the key pests. Tarnished plant bugs in mites they are still mites can be problem year round for strawberries. Now I will get into you know this gives you a season at a glance look, but I will show you share with you a little bit of details on some of the select pests. So one thing before you get into annual plastic culture practices do limit many pests of strawberries for example strawberry root vivo. Cyclamen mites they do with this particular system does help minimize impact of those those pests and also root nibbling diseases. So starting with the two spotted spider mites two spotted spider mites there. It's very small they will sort of difficult to see without hand lens adults are translucent greenish yellow to rusty brown or orange red in color and they're about a half millimeter long oval bodies of those mites have two distinct dark spots on even on each side. And which are which is sort of a distinguished fee distinguishing feature to separate these mites from other groups. This is actually accumulation of waste products within the body that is visible to their body wall. Eggs are clear white and spherical newly hatched larvae have only six legs compared to the eight legs as they go into older nymphs and adults they develop all four pairs of legs. Two spider spider mites the rate of development is highly variable and it is dependent on temperature ranging from five to 20 days to complete their cycle from egg to adult. So females basically they have about two to four weeks lifespan and the female can lay several hundred eggs during that time, which are enclosed in a fine silk webbing eggs hatch in about three days. And then six legged larvae emerge and undergo through two more thing. Two more to achieve the two nymphal stages. And then adults emerge after the second nymphal stage, and then adults they obviously restart the whole process that whole process can be completed within five to 20 days, depending on temperature and other conditions. Spider mite feeding on the, they primarily feed on undersides of the leaves, and sometimes stems also, they cause initial stippling, which is shown in the picture on the bottom left on the screen is sort of a white spots and eventually lead to chlorotic yellowing, or some times it's called bronzing or grain of the leaves and in severe cases necrotic and defoliation necrosis and defoliation can occur when populations are not controlled. Leaf deformities, stunted growth, parallel browning, build and reduce the food quality, the quantity and yield, quantity and quality are obviously the outcomes. These mites produce silky webbing and leave behind the skin castings and feces that reduce plants aesthetic value and ability to further synthesize. This is a good drink is relatively easy in a plot that is up to 10 acre in size you need to collect only 10 mid tier leaflets per acre. And observe them under 10 x hand lens if the field is larger than 10 acres then only five leaflets per acre would suffice. And this shows us if you have five mites per leaflet early in the season that maybe that may warrant application of mighty sites or if you have 10 mites per leaflet during fruit season, then that is when you need to make separate applications to control them. There are a number of options that I showed you in the season at a glance light as well, acromite with land, can might need to these are effective against all stages of their own savvy zeal. They are effective against eggs and juveniles. There's a lot of agrimac again juveniles and the dirt MP or the cultural oils these are organic, organically approved products which can be used for organic production. And the predatory mites obviously are the bio control option. If you want to go that route. The next pest group that I will discuss today is sap beetles, sap beetles feed on overripe fruit and are attracted to the cold produced by micro micro organisms feeding on this rotten fruit. There can be problematic in peach plum and apple productions systems as well. At least three species of right fruit feeding beetles are pests of southeastern strawberries. There are no thresholds developed for sap beetles in strawberries. At this point observe right fruit when is picking surface damage and tunneling. If harvest is anticipated to run long or if beetle damage is suspected date buckets placed at the edge of the field will attract small adults adults beetles. So that's that's one way to control that and cultural control is highly recommended for sap beetles. There are registered chemicals but those chemicals can cause issues with the during the harvest. We don't want to leave too much residues in there and minimize the pesticide application during that harvest time. Date buckets can also obviously serve as one cultural control strategy. Trips is another pest that has recently been problematic in some situations, especially these chili trips. They are serious pest in Florida and have been detected in Georgia as well. I'm not sure the status of chili trips in Alabama. But they are they have emerged as a serious issues, though both Larry and adults feed on strawberries underside the leaves. They have piercing and second pest mouth parts. They are originally from Southeast Asia. They have been several times intercepted and at the ports in Florida. And have been established in Florida since 2005 and in strawberries they have become serious issue since 2015. And now this is one of the key pests or one of the major pests in strawberry systems in Florida. The chili trips. They as I mentioned they have piercing second mouth parts, and they feed on underside of the leaves to suck juice and that leads to darkening of the leaf lead and midriff as you see in this picture on the left side of the screen. That can lead to leaf curling of the strawberries and the image in the middle shows that severe case scenarios of chili trips symptoms. And sometimes it also leads to bronzing and cracking of the fruit in this extreme situation. Several studies have been done in Florida as I mentioned this issue in particular is predominant in Florida, so lots of work has been done in Florida and they have developed management programs based on products here. Spinat Ram, Chlorinin, Traneleprol, and Acetamiprid, which is delegate, assail, and Ciazipir, or Xrel. These are effective products for management, obviously broad spectrum insecticides. All three of these products are reduced risk products, which is a better option to choose if there is a choice, but they'll be slightly more expensive, likely. Then you have broad spectrum choices like bifenthrin, which will be relatively less effective but can be used in some situations, and there will be less expensive option if you want to go that route. And we also have some biorational options that can be used for organic or other reduced risk type systems, which include azera and microtrol. And interestingly, these entomopathogenic nematodes when they were applied two times, they provided really good results. And the options are also available for organic growers and also other systems where reduced risk option is a desire. Now let's get into spotted winged asapola, which is the key pest in most of the berry crops and is becoming increasingly important for strawberry systems. Not only in the southeast, but across the country, even in California, it has recently become serious issue in strawberry systems as well. It was originally discovered in strawberries in California in 2008. In 2009, as you see on this screen, sort of increased spread of this invasive pest across the mainland US 2009 all west coast in Florida. And then from that front on it just quickly spread across the country in 2015 we just stopped monitoring it because it was everywhere you looked. And one name comes from these two dark spots and the exterior margins of the male wings. That's where the spotted wing name comes from. And males can also be identified using these two black combs as a feature on the front legs. All of these species are uniquely blessed with this very is this scarotized and serrated ovipositor that they use to lay eggs in otherwise healthy fruit larvae develop inside the fruit and start feeding into the whole generation from larvae from egg laying to adult This can be completed in eight to 10 days at 25 degrees centigrade, which can happen faster if the temperature is higher. So this kind of tells that this fly can go through several generations and even one field season. Over here is just images using blueberries. We generated this image of how the fruit damage progress is starting from over position to basically broadening up the complete unmarketable fruit is this takes about three to four days beyond that is fruit is not marketable. Overall impact of this fly was estimated to be $718 million in the US it was estimated in 2014 plus additional management costs included about 120 million 129 million dollars, which means it's approximately a billion dollar past when you look at take all crops into account. Starting with the monitoring initially we have used these 32 ounce plastic cups faded with the yeast sugar slurry, which is kind of a messy if you leave it for a week has become stinky and more than that it becomes really stinky and not easy to manage. Recently several states have participated in these studies to develop these dry traps, which is a red sticky card beta with these commercially available laws, and they provided comparable results and we are recommending this now for monitoring of SWD, these sticky red sticky card based traps. We did monitoring for several years in Georgia blueberries and what we noticed is that flies were actively around they don't sleep during the winter or slow down they just stick around. And what more interestingly what but you can see in this slide is that numbers were higher in the wooded areas nearby than the field themselves for the most part of the year. So it means there is obviously alternative host to plants that occur in the wooded areas as you see in this picture, we have tall pines that are mostly around the blueberry orchards here are other the cops including strawberries, but the understory is filled with several other species. And when we look within those several species were identified their SWD females were able to lay eggs and complete development in many of those plants in the woods, so there's something that we need to do to eliminate those to those alternative host, which will help in the long term, but for now. Management is includes biological control chemical control behavioral and cultural control biological control this being the invasive species biological control is very complicated. A lot of work has been done on classical by a control by large teams of researchers from multiple institutions after eight to 10 years of work. Finally, we were able to get permits of to release those exotic pastures that we imported from native regions of SWD China and South Korea. And several states are now building up the colonies to test to release those in the field and see how they will help control a stability. Currently, there's no bio control in the field based on our native pastures. All right, so chemical control is the primary means to control it. I'm just showing you this one slide which was the first attempt to control a stability back in 2012. You see very few options primarily again a fastwares and pyrethroids with spinosins. Now look at this. This is where we stand right now we have lots of options, chemical options to control a stability. They belong to several chemical classes which means we have the option to do really nice resistance management, which is highly recommended because resistance has become a major issue in California. In many cropping systems there. We haven't seen resistance in other states yet, but some states have started to show initial signs of it so highly recommended that growers implement resistance management by rotating products from one class to another. When you look at organic management, that's where we are in trouble because entrust is the only one that has good efficacy, but even that doesn't touch the line of threshold of being good. So it means we need to add additional nonchemical components to make sure we are able to control a stability in organic systems. Here are some sample management season long management programs. Again, these are just a set of samples. Now we have several chemical options that can be included and in general weekly applications are recommended in organic systems. We have to make some chemicals don't have week long residues. We need to go back after three days to make sure we protect the fruit against this fly. When we have a sort of a decisions to make for the whole season. It is highly recommended that you start with the highest of the heaviest chemicals which means the most effective chemicals as you see here. In the first slide, the no intervention in the second slide started with low efficacy product and still fly populations sustained. They did not disappear. However, in the third picture and you see here that highly effective product was used it knocked the fly populations down and then you can use low efficacy and mid efficacy product for the rest of the season to maintain that low level of populations which will not cause economic damage. All of the products obviously when we talk about insecticides they do have harmful effects against beneficial insects. So we need to keep keep that in mind even organic products do have a negative effects on beneficial insects. So we need to always keep that in mind. One thing we can do to minimize the non target effects of those insecticides is to spray. During the dawn and dusk times when flies are active in the field themselves and we can basically expose flies to direct spray residues rather than spraying other times of the day when they are not active and then relying on their exposure to the residues which may not be as strong and may not be as effective. So recommending it is recommended to spray during the dawn and dusk and the other benefit is that less beneficials are active during that time of the day. So that helps in many ways. Now moving on to behavioral control. We have tested several behavioral control strategies. The goal is to develop attract and kill approach. We have an attractant that can attract flies away from the fruit and then we have a toxic and mixed in it to kill them by the residues. So this one technology that was developed by ISCA technology is company based in California. We tested several years ago and it did show some promise as you see it reduced this was 87% less fruit infestation than when this particular product was applied which has an attractant mixed with insecticide and in this case insecticide was spinosive. Now the same company is developing these new formulations which are even more attractive. However, the difference is that these new farm TD formulation and OR formulations. TD in particular is the most effective and this is just by itself, attractant by itself is sold as Ajwant. It is currently an EPA for a consultation to be commercially available. Hopefully this will be available later this season or next year. This is sold as Ajwant itself and farmers will need to mix insecticide of their choice with it to use this as attract and kill to. Other chemical combi protect was developed in Europe and several labs we tested it last year here in the US and we found that even half rate of interest can give us just as much activity as fuller rate of interest. So not even more in slightly more in some cases. So this is really good product again currently in EPA to be considered for registration as Ajwant and hopefully this will be available later this season or next year. Cultural controls again these are really important. The goal here is to modify the environment to make the environment less attractive for SWD. SWD flies are very sensitive to temperature and humidity. They don't like high temperatures and they don't like dry conditions. So what can we do to change modify the environment. So yes. In this case we can do. Okay, so let me go through one by one by one first starting with exclusion. That's one cultural practice or strategy that you can use to cover the fruit production area or berries themselves. Keep the flies out. This is one foolproof technology that can use but it is expensive. However, some farmers I have just talked to they have repurposed their currently used materials in part and in part they got new materials to make it more economically feasible, but once you have it installed it does work as a foolproof technology to control SWD keep the flies away. Irrigation is you know most of the fruit production does need irrigation system. If you have the option use drip irrigation as compared to the overhead irrigation because drip irrigation creates less humidity in the canopies zones and that is that helps keep the SWD populations lower in the fruiting zone. Mulching is another way to control SWD. The principle here is that when flies larvae are fully fed inside the fruit they come out of the fruit and drop to the ground to pupate. If we have black weed mat or some mulch on the ground to prevent larvae from getting into the ground to pupate, they will get toasted and killed on the surface. That again has been a very useful way to control SWD flies in high pressure situations. Pruning is the other way to change the canopy environment when we do heavy pruning, but it does it allows more light through the canopy into the fruiting zone where flies are likely to spend most of the time to infest fruit. And it does reduce humidity a little bit. So that slight increase in temperature and decrease in humidity does lower fly population in that zone to help with SWD control. Harvest frequency is again important. If you leave ripe fruit out in the field for too long that is very attractive to flies and flies will have more opportunity to infest. So remove the ripe fruit as frequently as possible that will minimize the risk of fruit infestation by SWD. Sanitation is again extremely important because ripe rotten fruit on the ground is attractive for flies, they will be attracted from other surroundings into the field if they have more of that rotten fruit. So keep the field clean. Any ripe, overripe rotten fruit must be removed as soon as possible and you can deal with it two ways. Number one is either seal them in the plastic bags and leave them for two to three days in direct sun that will kill all flies. Or you can bury them at least two feet in the ground to make sure that larvae or pupae or flies don't come out again to become source of infestation. Last part is the post harvest. Once you have harvested fruit and you suspect there may be infestation is always possible to control that or kill those larvae. So you can see if you can store the fruit at 36 degrees Fahrenheit for up to three days. This will allow more time for you to market the fruit and also it will kill majority of the larvae inside the fruit. All right, so when we talk about strawberries pollinators are extremely important and there is a very little information about wild pollinators in particular which are extremely important for pollination in strawberries. So strawberry yield of course and quality is increased with insect pollination. And what do you mean by pollinator health in the system with which is currently one of the major issues and we need to take care of it. A couple of things that can be, you know, part of this whole concept of, you know, how do we look at pollinator health pesticide use of course can negatively affect pollinator health. How many bees do we have in the field and landscape what other sources of these bees can feed off of and then that contributes to overall population and their activity in the field that leads to pollination. These are the key or general pollinators that we anticipate the first one is any bees of course and the other ones are wild bees that play the key role in pollination in southeastern systems. So what we look for what is this the kind of a diagram shows you the red more red means and more negative for pesticide, more negative for bees in lighter color means better system so first on the top left corner is you know more pesticides. And the top down lower right corner is the least amount of pesticides so that is the best one for for bees bottom line. Even, you know, the scene IPM is all about making decisions and when to take management action is based on understanding of which pests are present need we need to identify those pests. How many of those pests are there what type of injury are they causing and how that injury translates into loss we need to know that by active sampling active monitoring of those pests and once we know that then we can get into making that management decisions. Then what management tools are available and what we can select to make sure that we will control the past but also will not harm the beneficial insects are other beneficial organisms in the field that is extremely important component of pest management. So now when it comes to management, there is a really important resource that I mentioned earlier is the Southeast small food consortium guide that is developed and updated every year for the whole region. It's available at small food.org if you go online small food.org you can find this guide and other small food guides as well. This is just the last, excuse me, this is the last page of that guide which shows, you know, in one page, all chemicals that are available and which pests they are effective and what is the level of efficacy here. E shows excellence, BG very good, G good and those things are denoted. This is one of the last, a few of last pages at the end of the guide. So I highly recommend you using this guide as a resource for strawberry pest management. It has really valuable information. Another resource that were recently, relatively recently created is in my IPM app. It does have information about strawberry diseases and pests as well. So you can download that available for both Apple and other devices, Android devices. With that, I would like to thank the, my colleagues, Hannah Barak, and Don Johnson and Sianika Lahiri who provided some of the slides that I shared, and also my lab team and the sponsors that have sponsored our research. With that, I'll take any questions. See if we have some time.