 So, I'm going to talk to everybody about piranhas root bore and pecans, something we've been seeing down here in Southwest Alabama, and I think the rest of the state should be aware of it if they're not already. I'd like to shout out to Brian Wilkins for really helping me out with this study and understand these insects better he's the boots on the ground he's a research associate. Down here in Southwest Alabama working at the fair hope research station and he is my pecan guru he's my, my go to person for all my pecan questions. And a real wealth of knowledge that he has he's been in the industry for a long time so kudos to Brian. And thank him for all the these data that he has shared with me and pictures and taking me out to see these orchards with traps in them and all that he's been really educational for my learning. But we'll go ahead and move on. If I can get my slide to move. There we go. So this is what I'm talking about the promise root bore beetle. These beetles can put an orchard in decline, causing limb by limb, a die back until the country falls over or dies due to lack of water or nutrient uptake. These beetles feed on the root systems of a number of tree species. And because of all those alternate host it can make them very difficult to remedy. These bills were first discovered in 1969 on pecan trees in Albany, Georgia, and those folks in Albany, Georgia have been gracing gracious enough to share them with the rest of us across the southeast and parts of the Midwest. Adults are very robust broad but somewhat flatten blackish to reddish brown beetles with antenna roughly half the length of their bodies on females and the entire length of the body on males. The larvae can be really large fleshy elongate grubs creamy white to yellowish in color with three sets of small legs and a swelling behind their head capsule with really strong black mandibles really creepy looking creatures crawling around in these soils. And as you can see there's several species of the insects can complete their life cycle on pecans hickory oaks. I mean how many oaks do you see out there every day there's a billion of them just down the street. So, their host range is wide they like poplars peaches chestnuts apples blueberries. Basically if it's a deciduous fruiting crop. They're likely going to be able to live off of its roots. There's a population spike in a con orchard when land is clear cut nearby so when they're taking out a forest nearby you might see them start coming on to your property. And for those of us in Southwest Alabama and South Alabama in general when a hurricane rolls through and pushes a bunch of trees over in the woods, or on the con orchard. That will cause these insects to move to a more suitable location like your orchard, they walk up and they see above a tasty pecan roots. So, these insects have quite a long life cycle lasting several years eggs are laid in the late spring after the adults emerge. So typically these eggs are laid near the host plant so once the larvae hatches it begins at search for tree roots within that wide host range and the adult does a really good job of making sure that that offspring is close to food. Once they encounter the tree root, they begin to feed and may feed for up to three to five years before crawling within a foot of the soil surface to begin pupation. And this happens around May is when they're crawling, you know, up closer to the surface. Adult emergence seems to be staggered, and there can be one or two peaks of adults adult populations in a given growing season time of emergence is quite tricky to nail down because it fluctuates year by year and location by location. The sex ratio of these insects is typically six females per male and once in the adult form they get down to business pretty quickly because they only live for about a week. Adults likely do not feed, but they for sure are going to breed and lay up 300 to 500 eggs in the soil. A lot of times I'll lay these singly or in clutches. Good luck finding the eggs in the soil. So the damage that's going to occur is they're going to the larvae is the damaging portion of these insects. They're going to be eating the barks off the roots, girdling them and then severing them. And I've got some good pictures to illustrate what happens when they are in the ground and munching on your pecan roots. But a sustained infestation may result in limb by limb death and you're going to see a picture of that here soon. So my first picture this is after a hurricane pecan tree blew over. There you can see what looks like roots sticking up out of the base of that plant. Most of them are severed off and this is due to prioness root bores. This tree fell because it had such a bad infestation of root bores that it had no structure to stand on. And this caused the wind to blow that tree right over. Maybe it would have survived if the root bores had not been in the area. It may have had a full root system and been able to withstand the winds. However, that was not the case. You can see these roots are kind of clubby and they just eat right on through them. Here's another picture. I'll let you guess which side of the tree the root bores were on. If you guessed the top side of the tree, you're correct. There's hardly any roots over there and that's because they were munching away having a field day on this pecan tree and we didn't realize it until the tree fell. The left side has got a nice set of roots. Not the best looking. It probably had some damage too, but there's still roots there as opposed to the top side of that tree. Here's what I mean by limb by limb death. As you can see there's some green canopy off to the left there, but that main central leader has died back. We've got suckers and low limbs coming out all from the base of the tree. That's a good indication that the root system has been tampered with in some sort of way. This is due to prying root bores in this case. You'll see limb by limb death just like this picture here. We can see there's a thin canopy. The tree is around it, especially this tree where I got part of it in the very top left hand corner. That's a really healthy tree. You look at all the leaf material and then you look at the center of the picture where this tree has limb die back. There's very few leaves. The canopy is real sparse. You can see a lot of wood in there. That's an issue. This tree will end up dying if the root bores are not taken care of and we don't remove all of that dead plant material or dying plant material. Sometimes these jokers can make mistakes. They think they're chewing on a root when they're chewing on your drip irrigation for your pecan trees. They're going to cause leaks and all kinds of problems. They can clog these irrigation systems if the worms get big enough. All kinds of issues, not just with the plant roots. You'll see a gradual decline of the tree over time. The foliage may show symptoms of nutrient or drought stress. Usually these trees have these insects feeding on their roots. If they have the insects feeding on the roots, they're going to be thinner at the canopy like I stated earlier. With that thinner canopy, you're going to see a reduction in crop load and crop quality. This is not only going to impact the canopy of that tree, but it's going to impact the quality of those nuts you're trying to sell at market or wherever you're trying to sell them at. There is some hope because we can't nail down a specific date for emergence or time of year. I mean, we know it's during the growing season, but it can be different from year to year. Our best course of action is to monitor for these little monsters. So we can monitor for them starting in May and we're going to do that through August. When we start to catch adults in our trap, it's time to consider insecticide applications depending on your tolerance level. If you don't mind having a bunch of dead trees in your orchards, by all means, don't spray. You may see adults move around just before dark during June, July and August. During the day, they're going to be hiding much like the rest of us in South Alabama. We're hiding from the heat and humidity. They're hiding from predators. You can find them hiding in the leaf litter under logs, other debris, any kind of pile of anything where they can fit their little bodies into to get out of the sunlight, get out of sight. So birds and other things can't come up and get them. Light traps are very effective traps because these insects are mostly not eternal. I like the pheromone baited traps because they're bringing in the insect we want and not just everything that's attracted to a light. Males are attracted to pronic acid baited pheromone traps and females are attracted to alpha pine baited pitfall traps. The males are going to be flying around. The females are mostly going to be crawling. You can find these black panel traps like the ones in the picture there there on the right for about 30 bucks online and you're going to be able to find those lures as well. And that's really our best means of defense against these things. We monitor for them. When we, when we see a population, we start to spray and try to get rid of them. It's going to take several years to knock out these populations of brown or fruit borers because they take so long because they live so long in the soil they're ever present. So the best means of prevention is to grow a healthy tree, keep it stress free. If we experience dead trees in the orchards, we want to remove them as much as that plant material as we can. As much of the root ball as we can, we want to get it all out of there so they don't have a nice comfy home to feed in. If you see dead limbs, you'll want to remove those to help restore the balance between roots and shoots. We got to keep that balance and check the less roots are the less shoots we need. You also want to get dead plant material out of the orchard because it's a really good point for diseases and other insects to capitalize on your tree's weakness. They can sense when these plants are stressed. A lot of times woody plants when they're stressed they exude ethylene and all kinds of insects can tap into that and they'll find that stress tree before we ever would. So try to keep your orchard clean if your land permits and you're not on a super crazy slope. Try to keep a weed-free strip around the base of those trees. That's going to decrease the hiding locations for these insects and increase insecticide effectiveness. When the adults arise in the late spring, we need to be monitoring for them with these pheromone traps. As soon as we start to see them, we need to start making applications of chloropyrifos at four pints per acre. That's the insecticide we're going to need to use. As always, you're going to want to read the label on that insecticide bottle because it's the law. I can tell you things all day long, but if you're going against that label, you're breaking the law. So be sure to read that label in its entirety. This is currently our only means of control. There's ongoing research. I know Brian's working on some stuff. Currently he's got a three-year study going on four years with these insects just trying to nail down what we can do to keep them at bay and grow good quality healthy pecan trees down in Alabama. Hopefully he will have a eureka moment here in the next year or so, and I'll be able to give you an update and tell you all the great and wonderful things I've learned. When we remove these insects from the orchards, some of these trees will recover. Roots will regenerate, a callus will form, you know, just like when we're grafting a callus will form. And that's an indication that there's some healing going on. And so large tap roots and lateral roots that have been damaged will form that callus and regenerate new roots and shoots. So not all is lost. If you can prune back that plant, get your insecticides out and kill a bunch of these adults to keep them from reproducing. Over time you will see a gradual rebound of your orchard. You know, it's not all well and good. You will have to remove some plants and you will have to cut some things back. It's going to be added work, but you won't necessarily lose your entire orchard if you act. So with that, I'm done with my piece. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to call or email me at any time. I'm usually always available and I'll try to answer your questions as best I can. Thanks for having me. So Jacob, I have a quick question. If somebody needs the identification, do they need to send samples or how do you send samples? How do you collect samples? For these insects, you can always, if you have these insects or you think you have these insects, you can always collect some in a plastic bag and freeze them and keep them cold and bring them to your local extension office. And from there, a local agent can try to figure out what's going on or you can always send them off for identification to Auburn. If you've got alcohol lying around, that's always the best way to store these insects for identification. I've got a prioness beetle right here on my desk that's been in alcohol for over a year that I was using just the other day when I was making this presentation. So if you think you have them, come find one of us, one of your commercial horticulture agents, and we'll be sure to ID that thing for you so you can start your management practices.