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Abstract
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Reports
Developing and implementing field and landscape level reduced-risk management strategies for Lygus in Western cropping systems
Ellsworth, P., P. Goodell, M. Parajulee, S. Bundy, S. Naranjo, J. Bancroft, J. Blackmer, Y. Carriere, A. Fournier, L. Godfrey, J. Hagler, J. Palumbo, J. Rosenheim, D. Kerns. Developing and Implementing Field and Landscape Level Reduced-Risk Management Strategies for Lygus in Western Cropping Systems. USDA Risk Avoidance and Mitigation Program (RAMP), Project # ARZT-358320-G-30-505, CRIS# 0207436. $2,500,000.(Sept 2006 – Aug 2010).
Project Collaborators: Andrew Corbett, Pierre Dutilleul, Bob Hutmacher, M. J. Jimenez, R. Molinar, Shannon Mueller, Russ Tronstad.
Recent gains in IPM have been substantial, largely through adoption / integration of new insect control technologies. Further progress in IPM and opportunities to better manage risk (economic, environmental and human health) are now largely rooted in our ability to better manage the agroecosystem overall. There is a major need to develop innovative, ecologically-based areawide systems of management, especially for mobile, multicrop pests like Lygus spp., which can undermine gains in IPM and stifle new opportunities by requiring broadly toxic, disruptive inputs for control. At the same time, growers require the training and tools to better understand and incorporate these landscape level processes into their individual and areawide IPM plans.
Our goal is to develop, improve and deliver sustainable, areawide management strategies for Lygus in the Western agricultural landscape and reduce all forms of risk. The direct consequences of our comprehensive research, extension, and implementation plan will be improved productivity and profitability in an array of new, major-acreage, and high-value Lygus-affected crops, as well as significant enhancements in environmental quality and reduced risks to human health due to expected reductions in areawide pest density and the need for broadly toxic, organophosphates, carbamates and cyclodienes currently in use against this pest.
We will accomplish this 1) through the development and implementation of improved field-level practices that will lower mean pest densities over large areas when adopted widely, and 2) by creating a landscape-level understanding of Lygus crop and non-crop source-sink relationships that will provide insight into how to manipulate landscape elements in space and time to limit risk of Lygus damage, economic loss, and environmental harm.
This integrated systems approach capitalizes on a comprehensive multi-state, regional research and extension collaboration that will synergize an innovative outreach, demonstration, and delivery system that will serve as a model for understanding and implementing landscape level IPM in other systems.
- Define yield-density relationships & other key economic information to improve field-level control systems in upland and Pima cottons, vegetable and vegetable seed crops, chile peppers, eggplant, dry beans, and burgeoning new crops, lesquerella and guayule;
- expand and replace limited and broadly toxic control options through evaluation and demonstration of reduced-risk chemistries for Lygus control and for conservation of key natural enemies;
- develop spatially-explicit statistical and simulation models of Lygus source-sink relationships and movement potential to identify opportunities for strategic planting and coordinated crop & pest management; and
- develop a coordinated extension program that includes on-farm demonstration and stakeholder-engaged research, organized outreach activities as well as an innovative gaming simulation training for growers around a theme of coordinated, cross-commodity practices, risk avoidance, and areawide Lygus suppression through improved field practices and landscape manipulation.
- Final Interim Report, (PDF, 156 KB, 8 pages). This report provides a complete overview of first year outcomes, research and extension activities, publications, and leveraged resources for the RAMP project. This is an expanded version of the brief report that was submitted to USDA-CSREES.
- RAMP Outcome Tracking Matrix (PDF, 140KB, 18 pages) This report provides project-by-project objectives, research and education activities, impacts and leveraged resources as reported by project PIs.
For more information about this project, please contact Peter Ellsworth.