NC State summer vineyard tour - 27 July

NC State University grape experts will be leading a tour of muscadine and vinfera vinyards on 27 July. We'll be hosted by Cauble Creek Vineyard and Morgan Ridge Vineyard, both in Rowan County.

 I will be discussing the Grape Root Borer Volunteer Monitoring Network (GRB*VMN) and kicking off 2012 monitoring!

 Preregistration is required by 24 July. See the program below for the registration form and details on the other presenters.

North Carolina hops arthropod summary

Developing hops cones at the Lake Wheeler Road Field Lab, Raleigh, NC. Photo; HJB

In preparation for the upcoming NC State Hops Field Tour next week, I have been crunching some data from our hops observations from last year at the Lake Wheeler Road Field Lab hop yard.  The results so far have been very interesting.

Background
Our goal, as part of the larger NC State Hops Project, was to learn what arthropods (insects and mites) were present in North Carolina grown hops and which of these insects may become pests in commerical production.We knew from work in the Pacific Northwest that twospotted spider mite and hop aphid were potentially significant pests of hops that occur in North Carolina, but we didn't know what other insects pests may be present.  We utilized the research hop yard at the Lake Wheeler Road Field Lab, which included 10 different hops varieties planted in four, five plant plots, to conduct our observations.  We sampled insects and mites in two ways: 1. We collected 10 leaf samples from each plot weekly and counted the number of spider mites, predatory mites (good guys), aphids, and leafhopper nymphs, and 2. We placed a yellow sticky trap in each plot, which was changed weekly.  We then counted the number adult leafhoppers, thrips, aphids, and beneficial insects (in this case, ladybugs) on each trap.

In addition to leaf samples and trapping, we rated defoliation on plants due to caterpillar or beetle (most commonly Japanese beetle) feeding.  We visually divided the three middle plants in each plot into thirds and rated percent defoliation on the upper, middle, and lower third of each plant.  While both caterpillars and Japanese beetles were present throughout the growing season, overall defoliation was minor (less than 1% each week) and localized on the top third of plants.

One plot at the Lake Wheeler Road Field Lab, early 2011. Photo: HJB

Results
While we observed spider mites and aphids in our samples, as expected, we also observed two other groups of insects that we did not anticipate, thrips and leafhoppers, because they are not considered pests in the Pacific Northwest. 

Looking first at our leaf observations, we found differences in spider mite densities throughout the season between varieties.  We express the number of mites multiplied by the days between observations and totaled over the season as "mite days" to compare infestation over time. Click on the images below to enlarge them.

Cumulative spider mite days in hops varieties during the 2011 growing season. Centennial had far few mites than other varieties observed, with Zeus also trending lower.

While Centennial had fewer mites than other varieties, more aphids and leafhopper nymphs were present on leaf samples.  This is a very interesting difference, because foliar feeding aphids may not necessarily be problematic in hops (presence in harvested cones is the real concern) and we do not know whether leafhoppers are a pest in eastern hops or just commonly present.

Aphid and leafhoppers nymphs per leaf in foliage samples during 2011. Note that Centennial has by far the greatest numbers of either aphids or leafhopper nymphs.

While spider mites were present pretty much continuously throughout the growing season, leafhopper nymphs appeared only for a few sampling dates across all plots.  The presence of leafhopper nymphs suggests that they are reproducing on hops, which also does not seem to occur in the Pacific Northwest. Predatory mites were present in on some dates but in very low numbers, and aphid numbers were generally low across the board.

Spider mites, mite eggs, leafhopper nymphs, and aphids in leaf samples across all varieties.

The most frequently captured leafhopper species in traps was the versute leafhopper, Graphocephala versuta, a distinctive species common throughout the eastern US.  We do not know if the leafhopper nymphs present on leaves are also this species.

Graphocephala versulta. Photo via BugGuide, © Troy Bartlett

The most common insects captured overall on our yellow sticky traps were thrips.  Thrips on sticky traps cannot be identified to species, and yellow is attractive to pest and non pest thrips alike, so we cannot say if the thrips we captured were potential pests.  However, thrips were not commonly observed on leaf samples, and typical "silver-leafing" thrips damage was not observed on leaves.  Aphids were also captured on traps but were less common on leaf samples.

Insect captures in yellow sticky traps throughout the growing season, 2011.  Thrips numbers should be multiplied by ten to get the actual number observed per trap.

This first year of observations is intriguing, and I am excited to share them in greater detail next weekend!  I am also excited to compare these results to data from from other components of the NC State Hops Project, including fertility and yield (posted here).  Cascade* and Zeus were the highest yielding plants in 2011 and Zeus had low mite numbers.  Mites are attracted to and reproduce more on stressed plants, and I suspect that yield relationship is more due to the fact that these varieties were vigorously growing and generally happier in NC than the others, therefore hosting less mites.

It's very important to note that these insect observations are only from one field season, so while they are interesting, they don't necessarily tell us what to expect in the long term.  It's also important to understand that presence does not necessarily mean pest.  While we observed large numbers of thrips in yellow sticky traps, we did not necessarily see large numbers on foliage nor did we see any evidence damage, and while leafhoppers are common in and around NC hops, we do not know they are causing significant damage.

Update, 14 July
For those of you unable to attend today's field tour, you can view the slides from my presentation here.

Update, 31 July
As the commenter below pointed out, Centennial was a poor producer, while Zeus had relatively high yields.  Cascade, the other relatively strong yielding variety, had mid-range mite populations and low populations of other leaf feeding pests.

More information

Two Opportunities to Visit the NC State Research Hop Yards - NC Alternative Crops and Organics

NC State Hops Project
All hops posts - NC Small Fruit & Specialty Crop IPM

SWD factsheets for Summer 2012

I have started working on a series of updated spotted wing drosophila (SWD) factheets for Summer 2012, the first of which is a general factsheet for caneberry (blackberry and raspberry) growers.
Look for more updated factsheets for strawberries, blueberries, grapes, homeowners, and on trapping and larval sampling soon.

Reminder: blackberry field tour this Thursday!

Green June beetle on ripe blackberries at the Lower Coastal Plain Research Station, Kinston, NC during a research trial in 2009. Photo: HJB

This Thursday I will be in Henderson County for a blackberry twilight tour organized by the Henderson County Cooperative Extension office; contact them for location and schedule information. I have already had two calls this week with questions about spotted wing drosophila (SWD) and blackberries, so I will be focusing on that topic and will also touch on thrips and cane borers.

NC Cooperative Extension on You Tube - Extension is...

NC Cooperative Extension has posted several videos on their YouTube channel addressing the theme "Extension is..." in three words. My favorite video so far is from Randolph County where extension is "doing applied research", including studying the seasonal biology of spotted wing drosophila (SWD) as part of the SWD volunteer monitoring network.

More information

NC Cooperative Extension YouTube Channel

Wake County cooperative extension cut

Cooperative extension has been disproportionately cut throughout the country at both the university and county levels but this week the cuts came close to home.  The Wake County Commission has eliminated funding for the horticultural extension agent for the county.  Although Wake County is home to Raleigh (the 2nd largest city in NC), Cary, Gardner, and other urban areas, it is also the 4th largest nursery & floriculture producing county, the 12th largest sweet potato producing county, and the 17th largest tobacco producing county.  This production occurs on 827 farms that cover 84,956 acres.  (Source: NCDA & CS)

The economic value of agriculture to the county isn't the whole story, however.  City dwellers in Wake County benefits from the growing local food movement, spearheaded by cooperative extension's 10% Campaign, and the NC Master Gardener program.

Cutting extension is a short sighted solution to a budget problem.  The modest investment in extension personnel and programs ($22,000 per year, in the case of the Wake County horticulture agent position) has real and tangible benefits.  Adding salt to the wound is the fact that the rest of the Wake County employees will receive a 2% raise this fiscal year.  With cuts like this, extension will come out of the recession a much weakened institution but still tasked with helping America's farms feed, clothe, and support the world.

More information
Wake County Board of Commissioners

NC 10% Campaign

The 10% Campaign, a project of the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS), the Golden Leaf Foundation, and NC Cooperative Extension seeks to increase the purchase of locally grown foods by10%. According to an article in the NC Farm Bureau Magazine, they're off to a good start, signing up 1,700 individuals and 161 businesses who pledge to buy local. Local purchases are key drivers for many of the small fruit growers I work with. North Carolina is the 3rd largest strawberry producing state, but virtually all of the fruit we produce is consumed locally, unlike California and Florida, the two largest strawberry producers. In addition to strawberries, many of our blueberries, caneberries, and grapes (especially muscadines) are consumed within the state.

You can get involved by visiting the 10% Project's website and pledging to purchase. They'll help folks out by providing information on where to find local foods and what's in season as well as tracking individual and statewide progress.

More information
10% Campaign off to strong start - NC Farm Bureau Magazine
10% Campaign

Western NC Hops Tour handout

This past Saturday I attended the second Western North Carolina Hops Tour.  We visited 2 small, recently established hops plantings, and after the tour, I visited a third.  I'll have a longer post on the tour itself, but I wanted to share the link to the handout I prepared for this event.  It's a summary of some of the arthropods we have seen this summer in samples from hops plantings. 

This handout is designed to serve as a tool for folks with hops plantings to identify the arthropods they may see on their hops, not as an exhaustive list of hops pests or management recommendations.  It's also extremely important to make sure that the right culprit is implicated in damage seen.  One thing that was very clear on Saturday is that some hops varieties are not very happy in NC.  This is not surprising given that commerical hops varieties are adapted to the Pacific Northwest, which has very different day length and climate. Leaf and cone yellowing and drying are more likely due to senescence,  nutrient issues, water stress, or other abiotic problems than insects--certainly based on the density of arthropods observed in the planting.

Hops Tour Handout - Insect Identification in NC Hops

NC Tobacco Tour July 19-21st

Field sites on the 2007 Tobacco Tour. This was my first official event as a new NCSU faculty member--before my official start date of Sept. 1, 2007. Photo: HJB

The NC Tobacco Tour will take place July 19-21. The Eastern NC Tour will begin with a sponsored dinner on July 19th in New Bern, NC and continue to field sites on July 20th. Our program will be presenting projects on thrips flight prediction, tobacco splitworm ecology (Monique's project), and new insecticides & threshold revisions (Richard's projects).

Our Stokes County trial location, after transplant. Photo: HJB

The Western NC Tour will take place on July 21st, and we will be visiting a lepidopteran management trial in Stokes County.

You can find all the tour details here.

NCSU Tobacco Tour Information

NC Wine picnic and on Charlotte Talks

Members of the North Carolina Wine Growers Association at their Summer Tech Tailgate. Photo: HJB

Michael and Amy Helton, owners of Hanover Park Vinyard, were on Charlotte Talks, a Charlotte area public radio program today to discuss V. vinfera wine production in NC. You can hear the radio program here. Amy is the current president of the NC Wine Growers Association, which held their Summer Tech Tailgate this past Sunday at Westbend Vineyard. Turner Sutton, NCSU plant pathologist, and myself attended to discuss summer disease and insect pressure in grape production.

Developing grapes at Westbend Vineyard. Photo: HJB

Before the meeting got started, I took a walk through the vineyard at Westbend and was pleased to find very little insect injury. There was a bit of thrips injury on some clusters (a distinctive star shaped scarring), but little other damage. This time of year, growers should be on the look out for spider mites (it's been an excellent spider mite season thus far) and early Japanese beetle feeding. Japanese beetles will begin feeding on the upper parts of the plant.

I presented an overview of insect and mite monitoring in bunch grapes (find a link to this handout here) and Turner discussed the fungal and bacterial rots that are a continuous challenge to grape production in the southeast.

More information
Southern Region Small Fruit Consortium Bunch Grape IPM Guide
NC Ag Chem Manual wine grape spray program

NC Tech Picnic Handout
Charlotte Talks

NEIPM Berry Webinar Concludes Feb 17th

An unhappy Japanese beetle feeding on a ripe Ouachita blackberry. Kinston, NC.

The final session in the Northeast IPM Berry Webinar concludes February 17th when Dr. Donn Johnson, University of Arkansas, and myself will be presenting a session on caneberry pest management. Sessions are free and open to the public, but registration is required. These webinars use Adobe Connect, a very user friendly web conferencing tool. Registration and topic information can be found here.

On Feb 17th, Donn and I will be covering:
Raspberry Crown Borer
Japanese and Green June Beetles
Broad Mites
Raspberry and Rednecked Cane Borers
Thrips
Spider Mites
Stink Bugs

If there's a caneberry pest not listed that you would like to know more about via the webinar, let me know!

If you missed previous sessions, they are all archived and can be viewed online. This is a great resource, and I am excited to be a part of it!

Blueberry Meeting Scheduled for 12/4

An information meeting for blueberry growers, extension agents, and other interested parties will be held at 10am on Friday, December 4th at the Rowan Country Store & Grill in Ivanhoe, NC (16846 NC Hwy 210).

At this meeting, we will discuss:

• Blueberry maggot management under quarantine protocols
• NCDA & CS quarantine regulations
  
• Spotted wing drosophila monitoring in blueberries
• Just added: blueberry bud mite management--new regulatory questions
  

NCDA & CS regulators, NC cooperative extension agents, and NCSU specialists will be present to lead discussion and answer questions.

Contact Hannah (hannah_burrack@ncsu.edu, 919-513-4344) for additional information.

Southeastern Strawberry Expo - A busy 3 days

The 2009 Southeastern Strawberry Expo wrapped up Tuesday. The meeting fostered lots of great conversation and research ideas. I always enjoy seeing growers who I have not encountered over the summer, including John Vollmer, who's farm we visited Sunday afternoon.

John and his family have been growing strawberries and other crops organically for 7 years, and come March 2010, his entire farm will be certified organic. John chose organic production to address a market need and has actively sought information on how optimize this system for his farm. This has lead John to cooperate with several extension specialists, including me. On Sunday, I shared some of the results for work we conducted on organic mite management in 2009 as well as some of the system-wide approaches to minimizing spider mites in organic strawberries.

John also detailed some of his other production practices and showed off a thriving winter cover crop of oats and red clover. Finding organically certified strawberry plugs has been a major challenge in recent years. This year, weather added another layer of difficultly. The California nurseries that John works with were flooded in late summer, resulting in a total loss of his intended plants. After much scrambling, John made the switch to cut off plants for his entire farm. Their first field leaves are just coming in, and they are smaller than John would like for this time of year, but they appear otherwise healthy.

On Monday, the NC Strawberry Association recognized its outstanding grower of 2009, Lee Berry (could you pick a better name?) of the Berry Patch. Lee shared his marketing strategy, which relies in no small part on his store, which he has dubbed the "world's largest strawberry". According to Lee, his only competition has been from "some folks in Iowa". Well, being that much of my extended family is from Strawberry Point, I am pretty sure I know where he's talking about! Lee's strawberry wins, hands down, despite the mid Western fondness for all things fiberglass.

Honored for their service to the industry were the NC Plant Disease & Insect Clinic at NCSU and a truly unsung hero of the NCSU strawberry horticulture program, technician Rocco Schiavone. I know I would have been lost without his advice many, many times.

My session on when not to treat strawberries is available in pdf form by request as are additional handouts. The 2010 Southern Region Stawberry IPM Guide will be online in January.

Tis the season for muscadines: upcoming events

A late fall shot from 2007, the last muscadines of the season hanging in there!

It's less than a week until the muscadine field day, and other muscadine events are also on deck this month. The Castle Hayne Research Station will host NCSU's annual Muscadine Field Day on Sept. 16. Morning sessions will be devoted to cultural, disease, and insect management presentations (expect lots of hands on information from me!). Following this talks, we will tour the station's muscadine trials and have the opportunity to taste test selections in the variety trial (always my favorite part).

For those of you that can't wait until next week (or can't make the trek to Castle Hayne), the State Farmer's Market in Raleigh is celebrating Grape Day on Friday, Sept. 11th. Rounding out the month, the NC Muscadine Festival will take place Sept. 26th in Kenansville, NC.

Connie Fisk, NC Extension Associate for muscadine grapes, maintain a great website with this information and more.

The changing face of extension

NC Extension is under going major shifts, including the retirement of many of our most experienced and knowledgeable agents. Among them, Karen McAdams, Orange County NCCE agent, who retired at the end August. The Raleigh News & Observer has a great article on her career, linked above.

Karen presented as part of an extension seminar taught by myself and Mark Abney in spring 2009, and her experiences had a real impact on the students. She has been a real asset to NC extension, and will be missed!