Insect IPM Protocols for Fresh Cut Peonies: Protecting a New Alaskan Export Crop

Insect IPM Protocols for Fresh Cut Peonies: Protecting a New Alaskan Export Crop

Summary

Seven Alaska peony farms with from the Fairbanks area (4), Kenai Peninsula (2), and Mat-Su (1) participated in the initial year of monitoring for lygus bugs. The project has a goal of developing IPM protocols for lygus bugs in peony crops. In 2015 sampling protocols were established and subsequently revised to track the phenology of lygus bugs and document their abundance in different locations, both from region to region and on a smaller scale from field to border areas. IPM technicians provided supplies and sampling instructions to growers, who then sampled with sticky traps and sweep nets on a weekly basis. Thrips are also included in the sampling to contribute to ongoing research at Washington State University.
Most farms followed the protocols and collections from the sweep netting have been sent to the Dr. Sikes at the University of Alaska Museum of the North for curation. Insects on sticky traps are currently being identified and counted. A presentation to the Alaska Peony Growers Association will be given in January on progress of this project.
This project will continue during the 2016 field season and we will be replacing one of the producers. Next year some of the producers will be presenting to other peony growers what they have been doing to monitor insect populations at field days with a goal to making insect monitoring a standard practice.

Objectives/Performance Targets

Because we increased the number of cooperating peony farms we met all of our objectives and performance targets.

Accomplishments/Milestones

One producer had not make the collections necessary for the proposal and we decided to find another producer. Word had gotten out about the project and we had no trouble locating another peony farm that was wanting to collaborate on the project. We met all of our milestones. Data from all sticky card, traps and sweep netting from the 2015 summer work has been collected and entered into a database. These data will be analyzed after data collection in the summer of 2016

Impacts and Contributions/Outcomes

A preliminary report of the first year of work was presented to over 100 people at the Alaska Sustainable Agriculture meeting held in February 2016 in Anchorage and at the annual Alaska peony growers meeting held in January 2016 in Homer, Alaska. It has been noted that this year many peony growers started spraying for lygus bugs in anticipation of another outbreak. We are hoping that our research results from this project will prove to them that is economically beneficial to determine insect population levels first before spending money on insecticide applications.

Collaborators: