 Hello and welcome to webinar series. My name is Inava Majumdar. I'm Extension Professor in the Department of Entomology working with Alabama Cooperative Extension System and today we're going to talk about sparamides because these have become major issues in row crops as well as specialty crops. So we'll very quickly discuss about sparamides. We have some resources for beginning farmers as well as experienced farmers. Definitely the IPM communicator on e-newsletter is a great resource to stay in touch with us and know about pest alerts. What happened over the years? We have seen increasing cycles of drought and then periods of wet heavy rainfall. For example 2016 we had a very prolonged drought starting from September to the end of the year at various locations as shown on this slide and then we had 2017 and 2018 relatively rainy periods followed by the flash drought in 2019 and by what do we mean by flash drought is a sudden stop in rainfall or precipitation as we saw in the end of August and in September almost four to six weeks of no rainfall and weather fluctuations like these can have tremendous impact on pest populations and typically when the weather dries out like that with drought whether it's a prolonged drought or a flash drought caterpillars become a huge problem in specialty crops or row crops and when producers are trying to control these insects with synthetic pyrethroids many times those are a few sprays of those pyrethroids can flare up spider mites really bad because they remove the beneficial mites. Typically we see the two spotted spider mites in the field very common and here's a little video that shows them in motion and you can see when there's a webbing on the leaf like that then it's definitely very late. Now spider mites have a very quick life cycle depending on the weather they do not like the wet weather and they're typically induced by the hot dry weather as we have stated before and also by overuse of pesticides and if you're seeing webbed leaves as we say it's pretty late and the damage has been done in many cases. We see the two spotted spider mites as the most common species but we also see the russet mites on vegetables and we also see this red spider mites different species of tetronichus on peanuts many times and again these are can be easily flared with synthetic pyrethroids. Here's some example of synthetic pyrethroids used especially in high tunnels where it's year-round dry season when the exclusion of rainfall and it gets very hot you can flare up spider mites with two to four applications of synthetic pyrethroids and the picture on the right shows the effect of spider mites on on peanuts effectively there's a complete burn down of the crop and you can have 30 to 50% crop loss in these cases. Here's another picture of the spider mites and this is from one of our experiments in clinton which saw a severe flash drought 2019 and you can tell the difference between the mighty side treated rows versus the control and these were flared up with just two applications of synthetic pyrethroids and after spraying for example with product like comite which is registered on peanuts with just after two applications it makes a big difference on the number of spider mites especially the mobile stages of spider mites and these pictures show the spider mites counts and you can see the tremendous reduction in spider mites populations with use of comite here's a portal portal is a relatively newer mighty side has a very different mode of action and again does a good job as a rescue mighty side after one to two applications and the difference is visible another microscope as I said before caterpillar control is a major issue especially flared by the drought and when we make a mistake with pyrethroid use in the season during the hot weather for caterpillar control is when we trigger the spider mites and this is just a hypothetical graph showing how we can lay out some of the treatments I especially encourage producers to look into insect growth regulators which are selective software insecticides for example dimulin diamond intrepid producers have to check the label and see if these products insect growth regulators are available for use on those crops but these are selective insecticides that can be used during that prolonged drought or the short season drought and then use synthetic pyrethroids later in the season when the danger of spider mite induction is reduced so space out your pyrethroids applications by rotating with different insecticides the aim of this chart now some of the best ipm practices for spider mite management there's some cultural tactics for example keep scouting very closely especially close to harvest when crop damage and contamination can happen very quickly reduce movement of equipment and personnel from the spider mite hot spots because spider mites are very good hitchhikers and reduce plant stress with timely irrigation fertilization as needed do everything that can help the plant to fight back spider mite infestations dust particles also carry spider mites so another cultural tactic would be to reduce mowing around the fields you will typically see spider mite infestations start from the sides on the outer borders of the field edges so reduction of any movement helps reduce spider mite spread of spider mites with chemicals there are selective mites sites that you can use try to use selective insecticides for caterpillar control as we have indicated before start the applications timely and monitor the effectiveness of these products it doesn't matter whether you are a special crop producer or a row crop producer it's very important to mark the location and going back to it after application of mites site to see its effectiveness and then please check the Alabama Cooperative Extension System website for the new ipm guides if you are a vegetable producer look for the southeast vegetable guide if you're an organic producer make sure you have the most recent ipm slide chart that are given at extension events and exhibitions overall the goal should be to develop your own farm specific ipm plan for spider mite management for more information we have some excellent resources for our producers we have the ipm newsletter that goes out every two weeks throughout the year you can sign up yourself through the website aces.edu slash ipm communicator we also have a farming basics online course for beginning farmers last but not the least the phone app called farming basics is available on apple devices as well as android devices it's a great resource to not only look at the pictures and diagnosis symptoms of of insect and disease but also to stay in touch with the extension agent through the app thank you very much