We concluded blueberry maggot monitoring at all of our sites the last week of July. A grand total of 3 blueberry maggot flies (2 males and 1 female) were captured at our 14 southeastern NC sites, while 165 flies were captured at our Rockingham County validation site.
Our southeastern monitoring sites ranged from 0-5 applications of malathion. These trapping results suggest that we could reduce pesticide applications for blueberry maggot dramatically, although we need to be careful to assess the potential non-target impacts of reducing broad spectrum insecticide use before wholesale adoption of a reduced pesticide application program.
Results from this project were presented at the North American Blueberry Research and Extension Workers Conference in Kalamazoo, MI last month. You can see the poster from this meeting with our results here (use the zoom on the right to enlarge).
Blueberry maggot distribution and abundance in North Carolina
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