Protecting Beneficial Arthropods in Ohio Orchards

Protecting Beneficial Arthropods in Ohio Orchards

Summary

While addressing consumer concern of food safety and the environment, fruit producers are challenged to alleviate those concerns as well as addressing economic concerns for the continual well being of their farms and families.

Objectives: Monitoring and protecting beneficial arthropods and encouraging populations to develop to levels necessary to incoporate them into sustainable production systems based on reduced pesticide applications.

Results: Beneficial arthopods were observed by hired scouts in all participating area apple orchards with spraying conducted only when required compared to calendar-based systems. While a scouting-based system proved to be more complicated to plan and control than a calendar-based system, the results showed that the number of sprays per season were reduced, San Jose scale control was enhanced by timing spraying to "crawler" emergence and populations of predator mites and ladybird beetles provided significant control of Eruopean red mites with the reduced spraying program.