 Today, we will cover insect pests that cause economic damage in blueberries. We will cover some of the select pests in detail and I will list other pests in presentation. However, if you have any questions regarding pests that I do not cover, feel free to type in the chat or just speak up at the end of the presentation and I'll be glad to answer your questions. So we'll start with the blueberry bud mites, in fact, sorry, there was some issue with the slide movement. So here is a table that shows a list of insect pests that may cause economic damage in blueberries in the southeastern United States and those pests are, this table is organized based on the blueberry growth stages during the year. As you see those growth stages starting from pre-bloom-bloom mid-season pre-harvest, harvest and post-harvest and list of those insect pests on the leftmost column on your slide. If you look at those gray boxes across in rows from the list from the pests, those gray columns show the time of activity or period when those particular pests are active and it starts with blueberry bud mites, scales, borers, then it gets into gallmage, trips during bloom, starting from pre-bloom to bloom, even into mid-season. Then if it's leaf hoppers, cranberry fruit worm or cherry fruit worm, and at this point there may be some other leaf roller type lapidopter and pests as well because that's the time and most of the green growth occurs, lots of foliage, lush green foliage available on the plants. Then we get into that mid-season plum curculio as the fruit starts to develop. As soon as we get into pre-harvest and harvest is getting closer to harvest, we get into those fruit flies. Blueberry maggot is the old most known and then spotted wing becomes the key pest that has become a serious issue most recently. Then we get into white grubs, ground poles, and some other pests that may occasionally occur in some situations. Let's start with the blueberry bud mites. They're really tiny mites. They're not even true mites because true mites do have four pairs of legs, whereas these alufi family of mites, they have only two pairs of legs. As you can see, their body is banana shaped. As you see, those legs are right at the front of the body. As you see in this middle picture, the body is transparent to whitish in color about 1 over 128th of an inch, really about 200 microns in length. Females lay approximately 200 eggs. They develop through four stages to complete life cycle in about 15 days at 19 degrees centigrade. They can disperse by this movement locally, but they can be dispersed by air to longer distances. Once they get airborne, they can go long ways. They can also disperse by but disperse with other insect pests as well by hitchhiking. Populations peak in December through February timeframe, where it depends on where you are located and then decline in summer due to high temperatures. Mild winters tend to boost populations leading to severe bud damage in the spring. These are the critters. The picture on your left shows an inside of a bud under the camera, where you see this large number of buds feeding on the buds. The picture on the right side of your screen shows the structure of the plant tissue that you will observe after a lot of feeding has happened because when they feed, they actually, obviously they excrete their waste as within that waste, there is toxic material that causes plant tissue to have this swollen type texture after they have released a lot of that excreta in the buds. And this bud mites, while they don't seem to be serious issue in most situations, in some situations, they can cause extremely high levels of damage. Last year and year before, we observed one blueberry orchard here in Georgia, where we had 100% crop loss because of bud mites. In other words, they could not even harvest. So these minor things, if they are not addressed in a timely fashion, they can cause serious damage. When it comes to management, post-harvest pruning and removing of old canes will reduce bud mite population. That's one of the best strategies to manage it without applying insecticides or miticides. If that strategy doesn't work, our populations build up really high. There are some miticide options that we have now in blueberries until maybe last two or three years, we did not have no miticides that were registered for blueberries, but now we do have. So portal is the one that we, in our trials, was one of the best ones that you can use if you see high land numbers of bud mites. Other options are oberon, acromite, and also insecticide brigade, denitol-7, evamectin, or movento, may work as well. Historically, for mites control or horticultural or spirit oils have been used. Using high volumes of water is recommended no matter what chemical you use, because these are protected inside the buds. Using extremely high volumes and high pressures are required to get good coverage to make sure that the insecticide residues are dispersed or delivered to where they are located, or as soon as they get out of the buds, they will get exposed to the residues to pick up. In tedious spaces, a bud scale must be better, as I mentioned, using surfactant to improve spreading and penetration of the spray also helps achieve the desired coverage to the tissues that we are targeting in this time frame. Spray timing and coverage becomes key issue for managing bud mites. As I mentioned, bud mites, they feed inside the buds. They are rarely exposed. They are exposed only when they are moving from one bud to another bud. That is called flagrant stage. That's the only time when they are exposed. And if there's a really good sampling program in place in the field, if you keep doing frequent sampling to actually identify that stage when they are moving from one bud to another, that would be another good strategy to make time spray applications to get direct exposure and good efficacy. Spider mites is another issue that we have seen come up in some blueberry orchard, as you see in these pictures. These spider mites feed primarily on the lower surface of leaves. They can build up really high populations, especially during dry weather conditions. Once you have a high population established in the orchards, they suck the sap out of plant tissues or leaves, leading to this yellowing or bronzing of the leaves. The symptoms when populations are high, they're very distinct. Even aerial mapping has shown distinct differences between the areas within an orchard that are highly infested with mites as compared to uninfested areas. So they can go unnoticed at lower numbers, but when populations are high, you can easily identify those. Leaf bronzing, as I mentioned, is the characteristic symptom of mite injury. And that's what you should be looking for when sampling for mites. They can build up high populations in a relatively short period of time and cause economic damage. What they do is when you have those really high populations built up, they suck the sap out of plants. Basically they deprive plants of the material they need to photosynthesize their food. So that causes a lot of impact on the following year of your crop. We did some trials here in Georgia to see what options we can use. We did a try, test a number of miticides. Porter was the best one on eggs as well as on the mortal stages of these mites. But other miticides also are effective when we need to make more than one applications. Scales is another issue that has been around blueberries for decades. However, recently scale infestations have significantly increased. And one reason that we suspect this may have happened because of the spotted ring drosophila. I will discuss in detail about it at a later point in presentation. But because SWD is a key pest with zero tolerance in the market, lots of broad spectrum insecticides are applied to control it, which leads to killing all beneficial insects in the system. That leads to those secondary pests like scales. The secondary pests become serious issue, then they have normally pain. And here in Georgia, we have seen reports that almost every orchard has some level of scale infestation. Some are really bad, as you can see in these pictures. If we don't control them at the right time, this can become really out of hand. And once you have scale infestations, like you are seeing here in these pictures, it will take some time to get control of those. Because what you're seeing is several layers of scales. Basically females have these all, these obisacs, these white sacks that you're seeing. These are basically obisacs that females have, which are full of eggs. As soon as they hatch, each obisac has, I don't know, 200 to 600 eggs in it. So there will be lots of scales that as soon as they start, the crawlers come out, they can spread and they can also get wind-borne and land on new bushes within the same field, or they can get wind-borne and spread infestation to orchards nearby, or they can go long ways that way once they're wind-borne. That can cause serious issues and becomes real problematic if those new populations start to grow. Their scale control is historically has been done using oil applications, you know, one to two applications of two percent oils made during the fall. However, we have done some studies to see what products may be effective at what time. Because now we have a number of other options too. As far as the scale species, we have a complex of several species, cotton equation scale, azalea bark scale, maple leaf scale, and potentially other species as well. And also more recently, close cousins of scales, mealybugs have started to show up in our blueberries. More, I also got reports actually last week from Florida that they have some mealybugs showing up in blueberries too. They started from citrus and now they're moving into blueberries. So as far as management, we have a number of options that we can use to control scales. Historically, applications of oils, dam oil, or GMS, or some other oils during the fall in November, they work really well. However, when we compare those applications of products in November versus right after harvest in August, August applications work better as compared to the fall applications in November. And the reason is that at that time in August, plant sap is more active and any of the systemic products are, they are moving up and down really well. And also, scales are feeding more at that time, whereas compared to November, when this corridor and scales are slower in feeding, it takes a while for them to take up the residues of insecticides. Whereas in August, they're feeding, they can pick up residues quickly. And we get, as a result, we get better control in relatively short period of time. However, there are some restrictions on our things that we need to keep in mind while making oil applications. You know, do not make oil applications during high temperatures or even low temperatures. Temperatures below 50 are not good for oil efficacy. Do not use oils within 14 days of lime cell for cap, tan, chloro, talanel, and dimethylate, because there is some compatibility issues which results in some phyto toxicity. If you don't wait 14 days after making these fungicide applications. Dormant oil applications exacerbate exobacidium. There are some correlation found. So just keep that in mind if exobacidium is an issue. Current recommendations are to make oil applications as early in the dormant period as possible to allow as long as possible between oil and sulfur applications. So that's kind of a bottom line strategy to avoid any of the side effects. Flat headed borers are another group of occasional pests of blueberries that have been reported. These are beautifully marked metallic colored beetles about half an inch long. They have short antennae and large conspicuous eyes so they're relatively easy to identify if you have a dirt small moving around. Damage occurs when larvae pour into the canes that they create galleries as you see in some of these pictures. The entry hole is relatively small but larvae feed inside the canes and basically completely girdle them. Adults are attracted to stressed or damaged blueberry cans particularly areas with pruning scars or sunburn. So they somehow sense that those stressed plants or plant tissues where they can find opportunities to infest. So one thing you can do is keep your blueberries healthy and vigorous. Preventing bushes from mechanical damage, wounds, or drought stress can significantly reduce this kind of damage from flat headed borers. Once infestation is detected the flat headed borers can be managed by pruning bushes to make sure that old canes that exhibit borer damage are removed pruned at a time of the year and in a manner that prevents the bushes from sunburn to reduce any further susceptibility or vulnerability of those plants. After pruning chip or remove prunings from the field if high levels of infestations are observed then insecticide applications may be warranted. In most situations we haven't seen high levels of infestation but if that becomes the case then an application of admire with irrigation through soil will be helpful in controlling these flat headed borers. Blueberry gallmages another issue that has made it to one of the top three pests in blueberries. These are tiny flies, females lay eggs in flowers and vegetative birds as bird scales separate instead of late stage two birds are the most vulnerable. Up to 80 percent of flower bird loss has been observed in some situations. Major injury is easily underestimated because it happens at the time and we are also struggling with the cold damage and many of the symptoms do get confused with the cold injury as well. Monitoring for gallmage is relatively easy just collect birds from the field select field two to three times per week place them in ziplock bags and in a short period of time basically in a matter of an hour or two those tiny larvae will crawl out of the birds and you will be able to see those larvae and get an idea of the infestation levels you have. There are other ways to monitor as well as you putting those clear sticky cards out in the field will monitor for adults and also using inverted buckets in the fields that have a history of infestation can you be used to monitor as those adults overwintering adults emerge out of the ground to over positive in bird to start the next year's cycle. So once you have detected infestation diazinone is one of the most effective products we have early application of diazinone during stage two would be the best way to go as I mentioned these birds feed in sorry these gallmages will feed inside the birds females lay eggs on stage two to three birds and larvae feed inside the birds they are very protected once the eggs have been laid and larvae have started to feed spray applications may not be very helpful so spray applications should be made sort of on a proactive basis to and they serve as a protectants rather than killing after the effect because exposure of the target pest is less likely once they are inside the birds. If you have sphere infestation and have already used diazinone then other options may include the delegate civanto movanto movanto label has some restrictions so you might want to look at the label and also check with local extension to see what the situation is because there is a some restriction in label language that may prevent use of movanto during this gallmage period in organic situations and trust is the only option that will as effective insecticides that can be used. So again make sure to use makespray applications as stage two to prevent further infestation and our sprays serve as a protectants rather than controlling the bugs after infestation. Spray timing again is key because if we miss the stage two to three birds females may have already laid eggs and infestation may have progressed already. And next as we get into the bloom stage trips become a serious problem and flower trips over the past couple years again have become one of the most serious issues we have seen for the same reasons you know lots of broad spectrums are being used and the beneficials are not as abundant in the fields as they used to be say before SWD times. In flower trips we have several species of trips that feed on leaf and flower surfaces that active before during and after bloom may move from other flowers nearby into blueberry fields they feed on internal parts of flowers to reducing pollination and fruits up to 60 percent damage has been recorded because symptoms include tight curling and malformation of the leaves. Monitoring for trips is also relatively easy because they are not good that they don't fly they just move around within the blooms. So sampling two to three times per week beginning stage three birds and placing some bloom clusters in sealed plastic ziplock bags as soon as you put them in a very short period of time those trips they come out of the buds and you can see sort of get an idea of what the population levels are. The thresholds have been somewhat developed again these are not hard and fast numbers these are sort of estimated thresholds and they vary depending on the situation and management strategies being used at a particular farm. Overall if you have more than two trips per cluster of eight flowers it means your population may need to be treated otherwise this will get out of control pretty quickly. A Dazinan is a good way to control trips if it has not been used for gullmage before doing that one season because we get only one Dazinan application per year if it has already been used then your other options will include delegate a sale or Sivanto for organic situations and trust is the way to go. However tips they are during bloom and they are the most difficult pests to control because during bloom we need lots of pollination pollinator activity in the field from wild pollinators wild bees native bees as well as honey bees that some farmers rent and others may also purchase those bumble bees that may be active in the field to help with pollination. So that's what one thing that makes trips control wheel complicated however there are ways to get around it and to still be able to control which one thing that you can do is make spray applications really early in the morning before pollinators are active around dawn or dusk at the late in the evening to make sure direct exposure to pollinators to pesticides does not occur that way you can minimize any unintended damage to the pollinators in the field. Now let's look back at the table. As I mentioned we will cover some of the select pests but all of these pests are important but spotted winged asapola has become the key pest all of the management or insect pest management this thing and this should keep SWD control in mind and make sure that any products and strategies that are effective to control SWD should be reserved for that time period. Let's get into the weeds of SWD. Spotted winged asapola is a vinegar fly of Asian origin it was it's been in Asia was initially recognized in early 1900s in Japan China South Korea as a pest of cherries have been called cherry fruit fly or cherry fly it was first detected in Hawaii in 1980 and stuck there for a while and then in the mainland US it was first detected in 2008 since then it has become a serious issue in all across the US and all fruit growing regions in the US. Spotted wing name comes from these two dark spars on the wings of male estability and females of this fly overall this you know estability belongs as I said it's a vinegar fly it belongs to family drosophility which has about 1500 members in this family and only two of those members have ever been known to become pests and this obviously is the worst one and the reason it becomes pest is that females are have this very unique ovipositor which is scarapized which means it's a hardened and has these serrations on it which females use to puncture otherwise intact fruit and deposit eggs inside the fruit a lot we develop inside the fruit and cause a lot of damage when females lay eggs you can actually see those breathing tubes from the surface if you have some trained eyes even without all the hand lens but with hand lens it's very clear that it's a pair of tubes that stick that sticks out of this on the surface of the fruit where eggs are laid and then once eggs are laid larvae do the eggs hatch and larvae come out within 12 to 72 hours and from that point on they feed inside and turn otherwise normal intact fruit into unmarked able through in relatively short period of time this time frame was done in the lab and in the field where we have lots of other factors and even higher temperatures going on this process will happen even faster the whole process from our whole development from egg to adult of this fly this happens really fast whole process can be completed in 8 to 10 days at 25 degrees and but this means is that this fly can go through several generations during the field season can build up populations even from starting lower numbers to really high numbers and can cause serious damage serious damage in the in the fields if management strategies are not applied but we have seen we monitored SWD populations in Georgia blueberry orchards for more than two years up to three years now and we have seen that flies are can be trapped a year around so they don't have no downtime and the numbers were higher year round in those wooded areas nearby blueberry orchards that we have here and most of the blueberries in the southeast do have some some forested areas of some non crop areas nearby where there are some other potential hosts that may be present so the bottom line is that flies are active and we have we do not have developed any threshold numbers that may translate into okay until we have this many no flies in the traps we can we don't need to make applications no once you have one fly in the trap you have to make spray applications immediately otherwise situation can get out of control very quickly in the past we have or several years we have used these liquid traps which were basically yeast sugar water slurry about 150 ml in this 32 ounce plastic cup or some people have used those peanut butter jars as well with the holes around the sides to you get an idea of what fly if you have any stability set the farm but numbers do not correlate to the population levels or damage so any one fly once detected means you have to implement control strategies we did some studies to develop a more convenient monitoring method where we tried these red sticky cars are mated with this commercially available lore and we found comparable results so now starting from last year we have recommended the the use of these red sticky cars mated with these commercially available lures to monitor swd and once you have swd detected in those red sticky cars that can be used up to six weeks you know one lore is good for six weeks we can look at the cars weekly and sort of get an idea starting about two weeks before fruit starts to change color as as mentioned these flies are after the ripe or ripening fruit that's when the susceptibility window starts you might want to put these traps two weeks prior to the time and you would expect their first fruit to turn color and if you see to detect swd especially males using those two dark spots on the wings is really easy to detect in those red sticky cars if you have trained eyes you can even detect males by pressing on the abdomen and their unique ovipaster can be distinct from other flies that may be present in the field but males are real easy once you have a male and in the traps you need to implement management recommendation management programs in the wooded areas nearby we did some studies to see to evaluate or assess populations in non-crop areas different kinds and pines with the understory of all kinds of wild fruiting plants was the habitat where most flies were present this is how it looks no spines on the primarily with the lots of things in understory these are potential hosts that swd flies can lay eggs and also in some of them can complete their development and one of my grad students did is research pieces work we found several species where swd were able to lay eggs and complete development so if there's anything you can do even you know burning within those areas to minimize number of fruiting plants nearby that can help at least in the short term to lower swd pressure if you have high pressures management there are several strategies by control chemical control behavioral and cultural I'll just show you a little bit about each of those and then we'll take questions a group of us a multi-regional grant that we we are working on or we have been working on this project as a multi-regional group for more than seven eight years now and finally last year we were able to get permits from USDA aphids to release this exotic parastoid ginespus the one on the top ginespus resiliensis this was one that passed all the tests and has shown some efficacy we are building populations currently and will have some get some some of those released at the at some point later this year and then we'll monitor to see how they establish and what kind of impact we observe but local biological control based on native parastoids has been negligible chemical control luckily for conventional systems we have lots of insecticides that pass this threshold of being good as you can see in this figure here so it's really easy to control in conventional systems but in organic systems that's where we are in serious trouble because interest is the only organic product that barely touches that threshold of being good rest of them are not even close so we we need to be really thinking about organic including other strategies than just relying on organic spray applications to manage swd in high pressure situations in organic orchards here is a sort of an efficacy picture as i mentioned earlier when the interest gets even closer the rest are not as good so what can we do to improve efficacy to get the most out of our organic products one thing we can do is that we can make spray applications during dawn and dusk time because based on studies one of my grad students did on behavior of this fly and the fly numbers were higher during dawn and dusk in the field especially in southeastern us days get really hard so flies were using those opportune times of dawn and dusk when temperature was lower humidity was still reasonable for them to be out there to making spray applications during those time can get direct exposure of the flies to insecticide and overall efficacy can be much better as compared to making spray applications during the day time these are some you know suggested programs we developed depending on your target market and strategy that you want to use at the orchard reduce risk based strategy delegate xl some new actually some other reduced test products are also available if you look at the drop that i showed organic and trust and evo-pigantic and a number of other products also that need to be rotated with and trust otherwise and trust resistance has is a serious issue although we haven't seen in the southeast in california high levels of and trust resistance of widespread resistance has been already reported now in uh conventional settings how do we have lots of options what would be the best way to go here is a graphs that and show you know if you have to make a decision excuse me what product to start with and use the heaviest hammer possible as the first thing that will knock the population down to the lowest numbers and then you can go with the medium to low efficacy products to make sure that you do a practice resistance management that way not no repeated applications are being made of one particular uh mode of action behavioral control is also in the making and the number of us as a multi regional grant uh group we are working on developing a attract and kill strategies based on um an attractant that attracts the flies and we have a toxic and mixed with it so they get killed as they they approach the attractant one of the products that we are have mostly suddenly been working on is a convie protector was developed in europe where we did observe in initial studies that even half of the rates of interest or we did similar we did find similar results with the with the delegate as well we're in conventional settings that half the rate application mixed with convie protect did provide did produce similar results so this this is one approach that we are working is still not finalized yet but as soon as we have final results from large-scale field trials that us will be going on this year we will make those recommendations cultural control as i mentioned are necessary in organic systems and recommended in all systems because they do help minimize uh use of broad spectrum and sec besides to relieve some pressure from beneficials out there again the goal here is the to manipulate your modify the environment to make it less hospitable for flies in the field physical exclusion is you know very simple way is one of the most foolproof strategies to control SWD in blueberries with 100 protection where you use those you know panels to keep flies out of the system in other berry crops it also helps significantly so it's one of the best strategies while it seems expensive up front results have been very promising for the long-term management of festivity and other pests and also in some studies uh fruit quality was also improved when grown inside the tunnels so it doesn't have multiple benefits if implemented irrigation if there are options you go with the drip irrigation as compared to overhead irrigation because overhead irrigation increases humidity which also flies like so high humidity means high and more flies or environment that is hospitable to keep flies in the field for longer time mulching there are several types of mulches that can be used to put on the grounds under berries the principle here is excuse me that fly when these larvae are fully fed they come out of the berries and drop to the ground either intentionally or unintentionally to pupate in the soil if we have a barrier on the soil they will get toasted because of high temperature and will not be able to complete their development that way there are a number of mulches you know black bead mat was the best one that we studied some region for example pacific northwest they are using those reflective mulches they also help with fruit quality as well in cherries and also potentially with berries because they do reflect light and even distribution of light on all berries does help with the fruit quality as well pruning is again another way principle here is that heavy pruning will expose will open up the canopy for more light to penetrate into the fruiting zone where flies will be present and it also slightly increases temperature and decreases humidity which does create environment less hospitable for flies and it did help in some situations especially with blueberries other berries it did not because the other growth was so fast that pruning did not make much difference during the field season harvest frequency more frequently you harvest the batter because believing more ripe fruit in the field for longer period means that there is an attractant in the field for flies to come in and develop populations so frequent harvesting does have minimize that attraction in the field and keeps flies out of the field and removing you know every two days or harvesting every two days was found to be the best in raspberries in in in michigan and the same thing in blueberries as well if you can that's the every other day or every third day would be the best way to harvest or as frequent as possible and same principle applies to sanitation if we have lots of rotten fruit over ripe fruit on the ground that means we have an attractant in the field for flies to come in over positive build populations and invest fruit so moving and destroying any cold fruit as frequently as possible once you do that make sure or leave in a sealed container or two for two to three days in direct sun that will kill everything in there or alternatively you can bury at least two feet deep into the ground to make sure that those few pair of flies when adults emerge they will not come out of the ground once you have harvested if you suspect infestation you can still keep the fruit in cold storage to maximize the to minimize their development in number one it will kill majority of the larvae if they are not killed the development will be slowed enough that that will that will give you enough of time to market the fruit to summarize as WD is a key pest and flies in our region can be trapped year-round so using the most convenient way of red panel traps to monitor it would be the best way if you detect even single male SWD on red panel traps that means you have to implement management strategies wooded areas where there are lots of alternative hosts in the understory that may be another place where flies stick around when we don't have blueberries in the field for conventional management we have a number of insecticide options but due to risk with resistance development make sure to rotate insecticides between with different modes of actions and we do have lots of options to do that use more reduced insecticides to minimize uh exposure and harm to non-target uh the beneficials out there majority of pestability activity occurs during dawn and dusk so making insecticide applications during dawn and dusk time will be the best way to improve efficacy of otherwise not too effective products organic management still remains a challenge that will require a combination of cultural behavioral and other strategies to get the good control in high pressure situations other pest like button mites spider mites scales dolmae trips they are the most important ones in blueberry systems as secondary pests frequent sampling is necessary to determine infestation levels and number of insecticides including oils and other options are available to control those insects astability biocontrol as i mentioned has been approved using exotic peristorts and will keep you posted you know how well they do and then make it available to stakeholders in multiple states more research is going on and will keep you posted to presentations and webinars like this there are some resources that rebecca also mentioned we have a southeast regional blueberry guide we have my ipm app we have uga blueberry blog that we've posed resources timely resources on pest and disease management and other aspects of blueberry production we also have this organic astability management pressure that was developed out of uga if you have interest this has a lot of information on organic management of astability with that i would like to thank you for the invitation and listening and i'll at this point i'll take any questions you may have