 Well, welcome everybody. This is our final webinar of the season for our high-tunnel producers. Today, we are bringing together two of my groups, the high-tunnel producers and also the master gardeners for this joint session. And we are going to focus on spotted winged drosophila. Oops, sorry. So spotted winged drosophila is an invasive insect that is causing big problems for us, and it's really just amazing considering how small this insect is. This vinegar fly is only about two to three millimeters long, and it was first detected in the continental United States in 2008. Prior to that, they had spotted it in the Hawaiian islands in the 1980s, but it didn't give those Hawaiian fruits many problems. You know, if you think about those Hawaiian fruits like pineapples, papaya, mango, they have a pretty thick skin. So we didn't think much of drosophila's Suzuki eye until it showed up in the continental United States. But since then, this insect has been a game changer for us in two different aspects. First, it has been how rapidly it has spread across the whole United States and the unique type of damage that it causes. So spotted winged drosophila was first detected in California, and in fact, the head of IPM for California totally missed the boat on this one. I heard him speak. You know, they've been worried about fruit flies for a long period of time in California, but they've never seen anything quite like this. So by 2009, it had spread across most of California and up the Pacific Coast to Washington, and it was introduced into Florida. By 2013, it was in most of the states. Now, we might have some participants from South Dakota that are listening today. I want to tell you that, yes, South Dakota does have spotted winged drosophila, so it's really pretty much the whole United States at this point. We have a map of spotted winged drosophila distribution in North Dakota. Now, these are the counties that have submitted samples where we were able to identify spotted winged drosophila, but we've got a lot of gaps here. So I'm pretty sure that it is the vast majority of North Dakota at this point. Now, before you can learn how to manage spotted winged drosophila, it's very important to learn how to identify them. We have a lot of different drosophila species that are not a big problem. It's just the spotted winged drosophila that is such a huge problem for us. Now, the male and female flies look very different. The male fly has this spot on its wing, hence the name spotted winged drosophila. Now, the females, however, lack this spot. The flies are two to three millimeters long, and then it has this unique golden brown color with red eyes. Now, on the males, you'll see that the bands are across the abdomen, so that's the last segment of the fly, but you can see they have continuous bands here, as opposed to spotted bands. With the males, one other way of confirming you have spotted winged drosophila is looking at it under a microscope. You'll see that it has these combs of hair on its four legs, and that's quite dispositive of spotted winged drosophila. The female looks a little bit different. You'll note that the female does not have that spot on its wing. Instead, it has what I call the specialized weapon of destruction, and that's called an ovipositor. So, an ovipositor is an egg-lang device. Now, all drosophila species have an egg-lang device, but this one is special. So, you'll notice it's got a serrated edge on the ovipositor, and this is absolutely amazing in that the female can drill into relatively hard fruits to lay eggs. So, this has been part of the reason why it's such a game changer. It's spread across the United States, and it can attack fruits that are just starting to color up, just starting to ripen. Now, in the past, we didn't have to worry about a lot of fruit insects in the Northern Great Plains until the fruits were ripe, or maybe even over-ripe. Now, you can see some of the damage here. Now, Kathy Wieterholt is one of our collaborators, and she has provided some of these beautiful photos. Here we've got some tart cherries. You can see the puncture marks that were created. Now, spotted winged drosophila can lay its eggs in fruit that is just starting to turn color, but it will also lay its eggs in ripe fruit, too. But here you see the puncture marks, and that's a problem. These puncture marks, not only are there eggs in the fruit, but it also introduces rot fungi and yeast, so the fruits then start to degrade. So, you can see this photo here. We've got multiple puncture marks, and then we can see this pupa that is right in the middle. So, these are on Juneberries. So, the life cycle of spotted winged drosophila is extremely fast. So, the female lays her eggs, and then the eggs hatch within a day to two days. The larvae then start consuming the fruit from the inside out. So, you can see the little larvae here in the center of the fruit. It's very tiny, very hard to see, but the larvae start eating the fruit, and we'll talk about the fruit host here in a minute. Let's start consuming that, and the fruit just starts to collapse. So, after the larvae feeds, it then pupates before it then becomes an adult. So, when it pupates, sometimes it pupates on the surface of the fruit. Sometimes it drops to the ground. Now, we can go through multiple generations. Now, we have no idea how many generations occur in North Dakota at this point. Now, we've heard in other countries it can have 13 to 16 generations, but right now we don't know how many generations. But if conditions are right, like 77 degrees Fahrenheit, the whole life cycle can take eight days. And that's just absolutely amazing. So, here are some photos from Ash Siol. He is the entomologist at University of Georgia, but he wanted to see the progression of damage in a blueberry. So, he took a photo once a day. So, 5A is a photo of the fruit just as the fly has laid its eggs. By the second day, there are breathing tubes, which enable the insect to survive in the fruit. By day four, you start seeing a little bit of an indentation, which just enlarges in day five and day six. By day seven, you know, there's just not much left of the fruit. But you can see how fast that progression is in a soft-skinned fruit. So, our horticultural host range in North Dakota is pretty broad. That's another factor with spotted wing drosophila. It likes any of the cane berries, so your raspberries and blackberries. Now, we don't have much blackberry production in North Dakota, but certainly there's some in southern Minnesota and in South Dakota. It absolutely adores cherries. It'll go after Juneberries, strawberries. It's been reported in hazcaps and erronea, plums and currant. Now, that's just a short list. There's quite a few more, but it can also attack grapes. Now, fortunately, grapes don't seem to be a preferred host. It will go after tomatoes. And what it'll do with tomatoes is it will utilize cracks. So, say, for example, you've got a growth crack in your tomato. Spotted wing drosophila will come in, exploit that situation and lay an egg in the crack. You know, the same is true for apples and plums. But really, they'll go to anything. They'll lay eggs in an asparagus berry. Do you know what I'm talking about? So, those little berries that are produced in a female asparagus plant where the seeds are, it'll lay its eggs there. So, it's been observed in over 60 plant species in 24 families. Spotted wing drosophila doesn't stop at domesticated fruits. They'll also go after wild hosts. So, they use these as bridge crops, you know, while they're waiting for, you know, your raspberries or something else to ripen. So, they'll lay their eggs in choked cherries, autumn olive, elderberry, buckthorn, even buckthorn. They'll climb, climbing nightshade, those little berries on dogwoods, honeysuckle, you name it. They will go after them. Now, timing is very important for us because it helps us understand, you know, what the damage is going to be in North Dakota. At this point in time, we don't think spotted wing drosophila over winters in North Dakota. Now, my, our PhD student, and I share a PhD student with Jan Kunodal. She has been studying spotted wing drosophila for the last two growing seasons. So far, we have not found evidence that it over winters. Instead, it seems to come north on some of the lower level jet streams, which bring spotted wing drosophila adults to North Dakota. So, for the last two years, our grad student has been trapping and has not seen any adults until about the first week in July, and that's when the trouble seems to kick in. So, we've talked about how to identify the insect. We're going to talk about what you can do once you know you have it in your garden. We're going to talk about integrated pest management. We'll talk about insects, insecticides you can use, and then some other cultural methods that you can integrate, because I'm sure there are a lot of individuals that are not going to want to spray insecticides. So, there are some ways of trying to deal with it. But I have to admit, this is one of the more difficult insects to control. The first step in any good integrated pest management program is to monitor to see when the insect arrives in your fruit orchard, you know, whether it's a commercial fruit orchard or your homeowner, a home orchard. It's a very easy way to make homemade traps. You can use these little plastic deli containers. So, you go to your grocery store, you can buy some potato salad from the deli, you know, take home these little containers and then clean them up for use. What you can do is drill some holes in the side. You want the holes about a third of the way from the top. This is where the spotted winged risoffola can enter. And then you fill it up, fill up the bottom one-third or one-quarter with a fermenting type liquid. Here we're suggesting one tablespoon of active dry yeast, plus four tablespoons of water mixed in with 12 ounces of water. So, this is a fermenting type substance and it will draw in the spotted winged risoffola. Now, if you happen to have yellow sticky cards, you can put a yellow sticky card in your trap and then look at that to see if there are any risoffola that gets stuck to the yellow sticky card. If you don't want to use a yellow sticky card, you can add a drop of dish detergent to the trap. The dish detergent will break the surface tension so the spotted winged risoffola will drown. But that means you then have to kind of sift out the insects in the liquid solution. As you're making your homemade traps, make sure you place them in a protected and shaded area. So, this is one thing that's been a real eye-opener for us as we've done research. Now, this is an invasive insect, but it is really particular about the environment that it likes. Now, my grad student has killed a lot of spotted winged risoffola because we didn't quite realize how fragile it is. So, it's been almost comical for us because we had a steep learning curve with this insect in trying to keep it alive so we could do tests with it. But what we have discovered is that it likes a shaded area, it does not like hot temperatures, and it doesn't like windy areas. So, we were growing or keeping spotted winged risoffola colonies alive in a growth chamber and they were dying because there was air blowing within the growth chamber. So, if you want to trap these, put them in a protected area in your fruits, in the shade and a little bit out of the wind, and then check the traps about twice a week. You will want to change the bait once a week, and this is unfortunately a smelly job. And when you change the bait, make sure you're not discarding the old bait, you're your fruit orchard because that will draw in the insects. You want to make sure you are as far away as you can. If you desire, you can purchase commercial traps. We have purchased traps from AlphaSense. So, within that yellow sticky card, there's a pheromone lure that is hidden, that draws in the spotted winged risoffola, and then we take a look at the sticky card to see if Drosophila's Suzuki Eye is present. So, we're going to talk about chemical management of spotted winged risoffola. Now, we've got quite a few individuals on. Some of you are in more of a homeowner situation. Some of you are commercial producers. So, I'm going to give both homeowner and restricted use pesticide recommendations. Restricted use pesticides are those in which you need to have a pesticide applicator's license to apply. So, we want to make sure that homeowners are not applying restricted use pesticides because in that situation, you may be breaking the law. You do need to have a license and you can certainly apply for a pesticide applicator's license, but there's quite a bit of training involved and a test that you need to take. Now, keeping in mind that I'm giving a regional seminar, not every pesticide that I am discussing today may be registered in your state. Now, we have high-tunnel producers from a five-state region that will be listening to this presentation. So, I have presented a broad list of pesticides. You will want to make sure those pesticides are in fact registered for your home state. You will want to also see if it's labeled for your crop and whether it's labeled for a high-tunnel situation or just outdoors. And then pay attention to reentry intervals. So, say, for example, you spray your crop. How long do you have to stay away from it? You know, is it 24 hours? Is it 48 hours? You'll take a look at that. And then consider pre-harvest intervals. So, say, for example, your raspberries are one week away from being picked. You don't want to apply a pesticide that has a 21-day pre-harvest interval. Obviously, you're not going to be able to harvest your insects, or harvest your raspberries. So, you'll have to make sure you pay close attention to that information. For those of you that are in North Dakota, you can find out if a particular pesticide is registered for North Dakota by going to this website. And I will provide my handout to all of you within once we post our webinar online. So, you'll have these notes and you can use them. But for North Dakota, if you are looking up which pesticides are registered in North Dakota, you can use this website and then you can search, you know, by product name or by active ingredient or one of these other search options. Now, I'm sure that for those of you that may be out of state, you have something similar through your own Department of Ag. But I wanted to show you a search result. So, this happens to be a pyrethroid called Mustang Max. So, I looked up Mustang Max. One thing to look for is it a restricted use pesticide in your state? Here it says why for yes. So, homeowners would not be able to legally apply an insecticide like Mustang Max. Now, there's other information you can look up. You can look up the active ingredient in a product. You can look at the pests that are controlled as well as which crops they can be applied to. So, all important information. So, we're going to start off first with homeowner insecticides. These tend to be, I'm going to give you both conventional and organic insecticides. There may be a little bit of overlap in the organic portion with the commercial insecticides. Now, some of these are taken from our spotted winged Drosophila extension bulletin. That's E1750. Jan Knodl, Kathy Widerholt and I are going to be releasing an updated version of this with more insecticides that are listed. So, this shows you some of the insecticides that are labeled for homeowners in North Dakota. Now, these happen to be the class 1A and 1B insecticides. You know, a caveat when you're applying insecticides is that you need to rotate between different classes of insecticides to avoid resistance. So, you know, say you apply a class 1 insecticide, the following week you would want to go to another class, maybe a class 3 or class 5 insecticide, and that will come, that will be apparent as we progress through this presentation. But here, these are class 1 insecticides. They tend to be organophosphates or carbamates. Active ingredients are usually either melithion or carbaryl. These are two conventional insecticides that are very common that you can find at the Garden Center. You know, other class 1 insecticides are listed here. Now, I'm not going to go too in depth into this because, you know, they change, they change this quite rapidly and each brand has its own version of this. But these are some of the brands that are out there and sometimes you can find a combination spray that has insecticide with fungicide. So, I mentioned very important not to just keep spraying one class of insecticide. You know, it's just like antibiotic resistance. We're worried about the insect here becoming resistant to the insecticide. So, you would then, you know, rotate to maybe a class 3 insecticide. These are the pyrethrins. A pyrethrin is an organic product normally. So, it would be derived from a natural substance, you know, such as the pyrethrum flower. So, pyganic is a very common omri-certified pyrethrin and it's labeled for a multitude of crops. It doesn't have a post-harvest interval, but the one problem is that it's only slightly effective. We find that the conventional pyrethroids tend to be more effective on spotted wing drosophila. So, these would include active ingredients such as bifenthrin, zeta-cypermethrin, cyfluthrin, lambda-sahelithrin. So, these are some that Kathy Widerholt had found, but there's certainly other pyrethroids that are out there that are labeled for spotted wing drosophila. Now, the difference between these pyrethroids and the pyrethrin is that they may be a little bit more effective because they do have a synergist, which increases the residual on the insects. However, these are not labeled for organic production. Other homeowner insecticides would be class 5 insecticides and these would be the spinocids. So, Montre garden insect spray and bonite captain jack's dead brew. So, the spinocids are derived from a natural microbe and they've been very effective insecticides. So, Montre garden insect spray is OMRI certified. The two bonite products are labeled as organic. I didn't see an OMRI certification on them. But here you can rotate through a class 1, class 3, and class 5 insecticides. Now, let's talk about insecticides for commercial producers. So, these are the ones you would need a license to apply them. So, these are mostly restricted use pesticides. There are some in here which can be applied by a homeowner and I'll make note of those. But just like the pesticides we discussed previously, you need to rotate between the classes. These pesticides, I have pulled them out of the Midwest fruit pest management guide. So, for all of you commercial producers, once again you've got to go through all these questions. Do you have a pesticide applicator license? Is that particular pesticide registered in your state and for your crop? And additionally, if you're a high tunnel producer, you've got to make sure that you're buying the right product. If it's just labeled for field production, you're not going to be able to apply that product in your high tunnel. So, you want to make sure that the product is labeled for high tunnels and or greenhouses. So, once again, here's the Midwest fruit pest management guide. Oh, this is a great guide. I wish NDSU were part of this, but we just don't have enough faculty to do that. But a lot of great information in here on a multitude of pests. So, this is what I'm relying upon for some of the recommendations here. So, I've pulled insecticides by a few representative crops. So, these are insecticides you can apply to a plum. I certainly recognize that you're probably not growing a plum in a high tunnel. But I'm going to give you some different classes you can rotate through. These are class 1s, the organophosphates or carbamates. You'll notice that I've got some abbreviations. Now, these are ratings that come from that Midwest fruit producers guide. E stands for excellent control of spotted wing drosophila. G stands for good, F is fair, and P is poor. So, you can see that for class 1 insecticides, imidane is a lot more effective than 7. If you get down to the neonicotinoids, a sale is available to apply on plums, but it's only a fair. It's got a fair rating, which means it's just moderately effective. You know, considering the problems we're having with neonicotinoids, maybe you might want to avoid that class of insecticides. We have a lot of pyrethroids available, and they provide excellent control. So, we see asana, bathroid, danitol, mustang max, proaxis, and warrior that are out there labeled for plums. Now, there are other classes of insecticides for plums. Now, you've got some choices here with regard to spinocids. There's delegate, which is a spinotorum. This is a conventional spinocid. Delegate is supposed to be extremely effective. Unfortunately, it's more effective than its OM-resertified cousin, which is in trust. So, if you're doing organic production, you're going to have to use in trust rather than delegate. And then, of course, you're seeing pyganic again. Pyganic is the organic pyrethrin. So, these are some plum insecticides that are available. The insecticides I'm listing on this page don't require a restricted... They're not restricted use pesticides. Now, I didn't list them under the homeowner insecticides because delegate and in trust are quite expensive, maybe prohibitively expensive for a homeowner. But we do see lots of commercial producers using these insecticides. When it comes to cherries, oh, boy, oh, boy, this is a real challenge. So, I've talked a lot with Kathy Wieterholt at the Carrington REC, and it's been a real chore to keep ahead of spotted wing drosophila because the insecticides are, in fact, so... It's just so onerous on the applications that you need to do just to stay ahead of spotted wing drosophila. So, once again, we've got different classes. We've got organophosphates. We've got neonicotinoids, pyrethroids, and then we've got others. You know, once again, delegate and in trust, but there's also XRL and Apta. Now, looking at materials that have come from Michigan State, they were really dire in their warnings about cherry production. So, they're telling you that in order to get tart cherries or in Michigan State, of course, there would be some sweet cherries, too, you got to start applying insecticides as soon as the fruit starts to turn color. And then when you're selecting pesticides, only select those that have an excellent rating. So, they recommended the pyrethroids, imidan, XRL, and delegate. They then talked about high spray volumes, making sure you get full coverage and apply to every role, and then they were advising six to seven-day spray intervals. I think that's really quite prohibitive for most individuals here. Now, when it comes to raspberries, there's a smaller number of insecticides that are available, but certainly you can rotate between pyrethroids, class I insecticide, such as malathion, and seven, and others such as delegate and trust, I'm sorry, organic. From the University of Minnesota, this is what they've recommended for fall raspberry control. So, they're recommending the pyrethroids, they're saying no to the neonicotinoids, apply delegate, malathion, and then have these... So, you're rotating between the three products, and then doing a five-day spray interval in the evenings. All right, so, how many of you are not liking all the insecticides you have to apply? I bet there's some of you that are not I would bet there's some of you that are just absolutely overwhelmed. So, that's why we're going to talk about other tools in the IPM toolbox. So, when we talk about integrated pest management, what are some of the cultural controls that we can use? Well, we can take advantage of timing in North Dakota. If spotted wing drosophila doesn't show up until early July, we know that late summer and fall fruits will be a lot more vulnerable than our early ripening fruits and cultivars. Now, we're studying this right now with my PhD student. We received a specialty crop block grant from the Department of Egg. So, we're looking at monitoring spotted wing drosophila on different crops. When do they first appear? You know, how many are we finding in a trap? We're looking at which hosts they prefer. So, will they lay their eggs in erronea berry and will they progress through their whole life cycle on something like erronea or grape as opposed to their preferred crops like raspberry and cherry? And then we're looking at differences in skin thickness. Will that make a difference? Now, I'm not going to talk about all that today. We don't have enough time here. I'm just going to focus mainly on trapping, which helps us kind of gauge timing. Now, we are using the AlphaSense yellow sticky traps, which have a pheromone lure. And my PortGrad student is counting the spotted wing drosophila that she finds on here on this yellow card. Hopefully, you can see my cursor. Now, obviously, we've got big, big horseflies and all sorts of things on here. Spotted wing drosophila would be much smaller. So, you can see it's quite a big job just to count the insects on each trap. I wanted to give you just a little, just a little taste of this research in the hopes that it can inform you. So, this is the data that Caitlin, our grad student, collected last year on hazcaps at the Carrington Research and Extension Center. On the left-hand axis, she's got the average number of spotted wing drosophila that are captured in each trap. And then on the right-hand side, this is measuring percent ripeness. So, obviously, we don't want to see spotted wing drosophila arriving until after we have harvested. So, we take a look at hazcaps. You can see that by, or before June 30th, the hazcaps are at 100% ripeness and have been pecked. And then we don't have spotted wing drosophila showing up until July on this particular figure. So, this is good. You know, based on this, I would say that hazcaps right now stand a very good chance of ripening and being harvested before spotted wing drosophila shows up. So, here's a crop that you can grow and not have to spray. So, I'll show you a couple other crops here. These are Juneberries. So, Harleen is, I think, on, and we've been calling these Julyberries. They may be called Juneberries, but they don't seem to ripen here until July in North Dakota. But once again, we have kind of the same situation. We've got percent ripeness being shown by the blue bars, and then we have average number of spotted wing drosophila captured per trap. You know, so we get to, just after July 4th, we start finding spotted wing drosophila, and then, you know, by the next week, it jumps up to, you know, 25, 30 spotted wing drosophila in a trap, and that's before all the Juneberries have been selected or have been harvested. So, there are some years in which Juneberries can be quite susceptible. Now, in years in which Juneberries may ripen earlier, you know, it may not be as much of a problem, but they're kind of right on the cusp there. Sour cherry. Sour cherry is pretty much devastated. You're starting to see 15, 18 spotted wing drosophila, you know, right about the time that you're picking, but it ramps up before it's fully ripe. So, in this time period, spotted wing drosophila can fully devastate the sour cherry crop. So, I have to admit, I'm not, I'm not recommending sour cherry to, to North Dakota producers or producers in this region right now, unless you're willing to spray the heck out of the crop. So, that's showing you, I mean, just a little bit of kind of the research that we're doing is trying to look at timing in fruits. Now, we've got, you know, other crops we're looking at like grape and, and currant and other crops like that. But what we're finding is that if you can have crops that mature early, you're better off. So, that's another reason to plant hazcaps. When you're selecting your strawberries, you may be better off looking at June-bearing strawberry rather than ever-bearing. So, if, now if this trend holds and spotted wing drosophila doesn't show up in the state until July, then maybe, you know, a good portion of your strawberries will escape infestation. You know, the same is true of, of your raspberries. So, the earlier your variety, the less risk there is to you. When it comes to others like plums, I would make sure to pick your plums before they get too soft. Once they start to get really soft, then it's easier for spotted winged drosophila to puncture it. So, I mentioned tart cherries may be a lost cause. And then apples were not too worried about at this point as long as the skin doesn't split. We're probably not too worried about grape either. So far, the only cultivar of grape that we've seen some infestation in has been valiant. So, other, you know, other points, you know, make the environment less hospitable to the insect. So, going back to our other tools, you know, remove your wild hosts, particularly if you're a commercial orchard. The wild hosts are going to serve as bridge crops to sustain spotted winged drosophila, you know, until your, your domestic crops are ripe. So, if you've got wild raspberries growing in the area, remove them, remove your choke cherries, your buckthorn. These are all going to sustain spotted winged drosophila until the time that your fruits are ready in your orchard. If your fruits are planted next to a wooded area, you're going to have more problem. So, remember, I talked about spotted winged drosophila, liking shaded areas, that's very true. So, your woods are going to, you know, provide shelter for spotted winged drosophila. They may go back to the wooded area during the hottest part of the day and then come back and infest your fruits at night. Now, I have a hard time making these recommendations because, you know, I firmly believe in, in planting flowering crops in your shelter belt to sustain pollinators. So, here I'm having a hard time, you know, telling people to remove wild hosts when we definitely want more flowers, more flowering shrubs out in the environment. But we're seeing that this can be very problematic when it comes to orchard production. Pruning, pruning is very important. So, we want to make sure we prune the canopy, you know, whether it's a shrub, whether it's your grapes. We want to open up that canopy to ensure that there's a lot of ventilation within the plant and we want to make sure that light gets into the plant. Now, that generally improves the health of your fruit crop, but it also makes the environment hotter and less humid for spotted winged drosophila. It's important to make sure you're pruning the canopy. And then, if you have irrigation lines, make sure you repair any leaking irrigation lines because that will provide the water that spotted winged drosophila needs, needs. And then make sure to harvest every day or two. If you are a homeowner and you're neglecting your crops, I'm also worried that you are creating an environment that can lead to infestations of your neighbors. You know, whether your neighbor is a homeowner or your neighbor is a commercial producer. If you are going to neglect your fruit crops, if you're not going to spray, if you're planting, is going to become a source of infestation, I think it's then going to be better for you to remove your fruit crops rather than allow them to become a source to infest your neighbors around you. So, you know, some very important points to think of. Okay, if you don't want to be spraying in pesticides, you might want to invest in some exclusion net, exclusion netting. So, Dale Isla Riggs out of New York has been lecturing across the country about her use of exclusion netting. So, she has been netting her fruit crops. I have to admit it's not cheap. She is using ProtectNet, which is the brand. Now, in a lot of her presentations, she's saying that she's using an 80-gram weight netting. This is... I've been corrected on this. She's actually wrong on that. There's only a 70-gram exclusion netting that's available through ProtectNet. But that's what she's using. It's a little costly. It can be $7,000 to $9,000 per acre. And that's the cost in 2014 and 15. I'm hoping in the future that the price of that netting can come down. But this is a very effective way to beat spotted winged drosophila. Of course, you have to be very thoughtful in how you do this. You want to make sure that you've got some redundancies, making sure that you're protecting your entrances, so you're not bringing in spotted winged drosophila every time you go in and out. If you do happen to have a fruit crop that requires insect pollination, then you have to have a strategy, too, because you might have to bring in bumblebee hives to pollinate your crops if they're netted. So you do have to think of those aspects. Other IPM measures, mow the tall grass and weeds. Remember, this can provide shelter. And then you may want to consider plastic... I'm sorry, fabric weed mats. So that's that black weed mat. What we've been hearing about is that the pupa will sometimes drop from the fruit and then drop to the ground. If you have a weed mat that's black, the pupa may in fact fry on that mat. So they're starting to look more and more at weed mats as a potential for reducing the spotted winged drosophila that pupates. Sanitation is very important. Clean up all your dropped fruit and then carefully dispose of it. You're going to find that crushing isn't going to do the job. There's still going to be eggs and larvae in the crushed fruit. Bearing your crop is not going to work either. I'm sorry, bearing your infested berries. In fact, the larvae have a great ability to dig through the soil. So you would have to go impossibly deep to bury your dropped fruit. I've heard some people use a kaolin spray. So that's kind of a clay spray that they use. I don't know how effective that is. Probably your best bet is, okay, if you have a smaller amount of fruit, you can freeze it solid. That will kill any infested spotted winged drosophila. Or you can solarize the fruit. So you collect them, put them in a plastic trash bag and then let it just bake in the sun for several days in the hot heat until you kill those insects. For those of you that sell at farmer's market, you may be concerned on whether you're selling infested fruit. There's a very easy test that you can do. What you can do is mix up a solution of salt and water. Generally about one tablespoon of salt to one cup of water. And then you place in a representative sample of your raspberries or your cherries or whatever. You'll crush up the fruit and then allow the salt to act as an irritant. The SWD larvae will then float up to the surface and you'll be able to see roughly what the infestation rate is. So it's a good tip for those of you that may be selling at farmer's markets and want to make sure that you're selling produce that doesn't have spotted winged drosophila. Other things to think about would be refrigerating your produce as soon as you harvest it. So stick them in the refrigerator. And what that will do is say, for example, there are eggs that are laid or maybe even the tiniest instars, refrigeration will stop development. So your customers will not see the infestation. Now if you're running a UPIC business, tell your customers that they need to refrigerate their fruit. Very, very important for this reason. For those of you that are freezing your fruit to save for later, that's a good way of preventing the eggs from hatching and the first instars from developing further. So all along I've been telling you how to avoid spotted winged drosophila. But what happens if you eat the larvae? Are you going to die? Are you going to be poisoned? What do you think out there? Well, you're not going to die. You're not going to be poisoned. It's just the yuck factor. So I like to tell a lot of people it's added protein. It's all added protein. It's all good. So are you thoroughly depressed now about the state of fruits in the Northern Great Plains? Is there hope? Yes. Millions and millions of dollars are being spent nationally. They've got so many entomologists working on that. I'm hopeful that we will come to live with this invasive pest. They're looking at different parasitoids from Asia. So spotted winged drosophila comes from Asia. So they're looking at the native parasites that would prey on spotted winged drosophila. They're also looking at natural predators here in the United States. There are predators that will eat spotted winged drosophila. So there's more work being done on that. But that's not going to be the silver bullet, at least not now. They're looking at netting, as we mentioned, and then repellents. I was really quite optimistic when I read a new paper on butyl athranolate. This is actually something they use as a food additive, meaning that humans can consume it. But maybe in the future, you might be able to spray a repellent, such as BA, on your crop. It would be food safe. And at the same time would deter spotted winged drosophila. We don't know if this is going to come to fruition, but there's research being done on that. As well as new insecticides that would not be poisonous to humans. So they're looking at sugar alcohol types of compounds, like erythritrol, which can be in fact very poisonous to different drosophila. They're looking at different traps and lures, looking at ways at doing mass trapping or using trap crops to kill insects. They're looking at genetic modification and also spraying the ground around the plants. So there's more research coming up right now. Now mass trapping seems to be kind of striking out, but maybe doing a trap crop might work. So you'll be seeing more and more of this as we progress. So I wanted to acknowledge our research team. Caitlin Krueger is our PhD student. And then Jan Knodl, Harleen Hatterman-Valenti, and I are on her committee. And we're also working with Kathy Wieter-Holt at the Carrington REC. We are very thankful that the Carrington REC has allowed us to conduct research there. And then we thank the specialty crop block grant program, which is administered through the North Dakota Department of Ag. So at this time, I'll take any questions or comments that you have. So you're welcome to type them in the chat box, or if you have a microphone, that's certainly something that you can use. So any questions out there? I know I covered a lot of information, but I wanted you to have the most recent information. So any observations? Are you seeing spotted wing drosophila? Excuse me. This is Drew up here at Ray. Yes. I am horrified with the course permission on and in around my land. I planted Juneberry, choked cherry, buffalo berry. My small grouping of 25 current is thriving. And of course I have plum and tomato and asparagus, Mary Washington that does in fact have the female. The female berries. Yes. And I have seen those seed and I have planted from those. So I don't know if they're here or not, but since I'm only half mile from the extension service here, I presume we're going to be, we're close enough to be cross infesting each other. You know, there's a possibility, but I would assume that your REC is controlling spotted wing drosophila. You have an advantage that we don't drew. Drew is from Western North Dakota. We do see that spotted wing drosophila does not do as well in areas that are much drier. So I believe that your area is going to do better because you're on the drier side of the state. Investations won't be as bad. We worry a lot more in areas where we receive a lot more rainfall. So we don't quite know how bad things are going to be. You know, out in Western North Dakota, so far we haven't been hearing a whole lot, which leads me to believe that spotted wing drosophila may be more of a problem in wetter areas of the state rather than Williston. So there's hope. There's hope on that side of the state. Thank you. I need hope. All right, so I'm seeing questions from Beverly to everyone. Are you wanting reports from anyone trapping? Now, if you happen to be in one of these other counties, here I'm going to just kind of, where we don't have, here, I'll go back to the map here. We are looking for samples from other counties so we can fill in the distribution map. So I'm sorry, it's towards the beginning here. Oops, there we go. So if you're from one of the counties that is in white or light blue, yes, we are looking for samples to confirm the distribution. That does give us information. So good question, Beverly. Question from Joan. Where do we get the yellow sticky traps? I'm trying to remember the name of the company. It might be Gemple or was it Leonard? There are horticultural supply companies that have it. Any insect supply company would have it. They're very cheap. You could probably even get them on Amazon to tell you the truth. Just Google yellow insect sticky traps. They're very much widely available. The only thing is that they are really sticky. So be careful. Lindy Berg. Oh yes, Lindy Berg says yes. You can get the trap supplies at Amazon. Other questions. There's a question from Jamestown. Yes. Is mulch in raspberries a bad idea? Like hay or straw on the ground to keep the weeds down? Well, they're doing research on that. They, they are finding that the black. Well, it's, I think it's kind of a double-edged sword. Now the black weed mat does, does cause those pupa to dry up. But at the same time, I think they're researching whether the mulch provides habitat for the natural predators. So we don't necessarily have a clear picture yet on the role that mulch plays, but it is possible that natural, or that mulch may in fact provide habitat for predators that may then eat the pupa and pray on spotted wing drosophila. So that's still being researched. We don't have, I don't think there has been a conclusion on that aspect. But great question. You know, frankly, as a horticulturist, we say mulch everything. So I would, I would hate to just go to, to a weed mat all the time. We do like to, we do like to amend the soil and think about soil health concerns and moisture retention. So how's that for a wishy-washy answer? Other questions or comments? So how bad, how bad is spotted wing drosophila where you live? Yes. This is Cecilia from Jamestown. And we definitely have it in our raspberries. And my neighbor who's watching us with me does as well. And, but you know, if you do follow those practices and pick early and pick often, it's not so bad. And we need to one of those, my friend and I are still living and we've eaten plenty of larva. So, you know, if you just don't watch. Cecilia, I just absolutely love you. I love you. Cecilia. But anyway, since this is kind of depressing, but hopefully the research will help. Yes. We're hoping, we're hoping because we don't want to just be spraying all these, all these pesticides. That's not what we're about. But, but great point, you know, pick early, pick often, you know, make sure you're not giving them more time to lay eggs. That's, that really is the key, particularly for homeowners rather than spraying the heck out of it. Anybody else? Well, thank you very much. I'm going to be, we're going to be posting the recording on our, on our website. Oh, I'm seeing another question in the chat box. Beverly has them in Glen, all in. So yes, that's getting more towards the western area of the state. I think Glenn all in is in Morton County. If I'm not mistaken, maybe a little bit drier, but maybe not as dry as Williams County. All right. Well, thank you very much. And this will be our last webinar of the NDSU high tunnel community practice series for the season. We'll start up again in the fall. Master gardeners will have other webinars, but they'll be more master gardener focused. Thank you very much and have a good day.