Sustainable Management of Asian citrus psyllid (ACP) and Citrus Production

Sustainable Management of Asian citrus psyllid (ACP) and Citrus Production

Report Date: 10/15/2020
Project: 18-052C   Year: 2020
Category: ACP Vector
Author: Jawwad Qureshi
Sponsor: Citrus Research and Development Foundation

This project evaluates four Integrated Pest Management (IPM) programs for ACP, including 1) conventional and organic insecticides plus biological control, 2) organic insecticides and Horticultural Mineral Oil (HMO) plus biological control, 3) conventional insecticides plus biological control, and 4) HMO plus biological control. Program 5 is biological control only. Between July-September, biweekly tap sampling was conducted in all programs. However, the number of Asian citrus psyllid adults averaged less than our treatment threshold of 0.1 per tap sample except program 4 employing HMO plus biological control which needed a spray application in September. In July, 10,000 Tamarixia radiata wasps were released across all programs, followed by 6,000 in August and 4,000 in September. However, due to the low psyllid populations during this quarter nymphal samples were not available to assess the parasitism rates. We also released 20,000 predatory mites Amblyseius swirskii across all IPM programs in the month of September and will be evaluating their establishment. We continued suction sampling during this quarter which showed spiders as the most abundant predators at 69% of all collections followed by the lacewings at 31%. We made collections of ACP from our IPM programs to start testing for insecticide resistance. Conisdering the abundance of lacewings in these programs, we made some field collections and established their colonies and initiated some studies to look at their tolerance to commonly used insecticides. We will be able to report progress with these experiments at a later time.       


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