EAST LANSING, Mich. — Sometimes, the only way to make something better is to forget everything you already know about it and start again.
That strategy brought some surprising results — in a good way — for Michigan State University entomologist and AgBioResearch scientist Larry Gut‘s research in improving codling moth — the infamous “worm in the apple” — management techniques for Michigan’s fruit growers.
“With the current strategies, growers haven’t been absolutely confident in knowing where codling moth populations are in their orchards,” Gut said. “The pheromone traps currently in use have become the standard for trapping codling moth, but growers weren’t always seeing a correlation between the number caught in the traps and what was actually happening in the orchard.
“They want to make sure they are putting the pheromone traps in the places where what’s being caught will actually represent the population of the pest in that area of the orchard.”
Better trap
Gut and his lab group figured there had to be a better trap.
“I told my crew to ignore what they knew about these traps, and find what works best,” he said. “They started over, using information we have learned about codling moth behavior. These traps needed to do more than attract, they needed to help control codling moth.”
Gut has seen great value in behavior-based pest research during his career, and his lab crew has used it extensively in many projects. Presently, pheromone traps hang parallel to the trees with the lure at the bottom, but it wasn’t really known if this was the best way to attract codling moth.
Gut’s lab created and tested more than a dozen different traps of varying sizes, shapes and orientation to see what made a codling moth males preferred.
Mike Reinke, a graduate student in Gut’s lab, stumbled upon the effectiveness of changing the trap orientation to hanging perpendicular to a tree, while working with trap designs in the laboratory flight tunnel, where the pests are flying about freely in a controlled area and closely monitored.
Success
This totally novel approach, coupled with a newer, smaller trap design, resulted in a trap that not only attracted the pest, it captured nearly 100 percent of the male codling moths that made contact with it.
“The consistently higher catches in these new traps with all interior walls treated with stickum and small holes for entry of moths suggests that growers could benefit from adopting this system as the standard,” Gut said. “It has evolved from a trapping tool to a control method.”
This trap is in its first year of use, and the Michigan Apple Committee has been a funding partner along with Michigan’s plant agriculture initiative Project GREEEN in its development Gut has done the preliminary work to patent the design, and it is also being tested in Australia.
Gut’s research has also shown that more is better when it comes to the number of codling moth pheromone traps placed in suspect areas in the orchard. Growers want to make sure that numerous traps are placed in areas where codling moths have been problematic in the past.
Also, Gut has found that the use of pheromone traps that also contain plant volatiles as an additional attractant is a robust method for codling moth control. Growers are seeing the impact of this research.
Example
In an interview with Fruit Growers News magazine, Steve Thome, current president of the Michigan State Horticultural Society and owner of Thome Orchards near Grand Rapids, talked about the success he’d had using codling moth trapping and disruption methods since implementing them over the past seven years.
“We’ve learned a lot,” he noted. “We continue to monitor, and have one trap per every 5 acres. We run our own trap line, and there are some hot spots that we have to spray, such as abandoned trees or wild trees. But for the most part, we have season-long control. We might have sprayed 15 acres this past year (out of roughly 115 acres).”
Broader knowledge of codling moth behavior has also led to the discovery that temperature has a dramatic effect on codling moth flight, and growers can use this information to time their pesticide sprays efficiently and economically.
“The correlation between temperature and flight has helped us create an improved decision-making model for growers that can save them time and money,” Gut said.
“Often in the springtime, we’ll get questions from growers who are seeing moths in their apple orchards, but aren’t sure if they should be spraying for them because it’s still cold. The temperature models we have created can tell them when to concentrate on treatment. They can take their cue from the weather and temperature as to how the bug is behaving.”
Savings
With proper monitoring systems and decision-making tools, apple growers in Michigan can eliminate unnecessary treatments, saving time, labor and money.
It is estimated that a single pesticide treatment can cost $40 or more per acre, so a grower with a 100-acre orchard can save $4,000 by eliminating a single treatment. For the 43,000 acres of apples grown in the state, this amounts to a $1.94 million profit for growers.
