So, it’s fall and the fruit crops are still coming in. With about six weeks left to go, already the Monday-morning quarterbacking has started. Growers and researchers are reviewing what happened, what worked, what fizzled and thinking about producing the 2010 crop.
For much of the country, diseases loved the moist coolness of 2009 but insects didn’t like it much.
The cool nights led Michigan State University fruit entomologist Larry Gut to suggest that temperature may act like an on-off switch for codling moths. Below 60˚ F they just don’t fly. MSU entomologist John Wise and Gut noted that most disease and insect models use combinations of temperatures and wetness in cumulative ways – after so many growing degree days, something happens. The switch idea is different.
They spoke to about 25 people, most of them chemical company representatives, during a field day at the Trevor Nichols Research Complex (TNRC) near Fennville, Mich., on the first day of fall – already reviewing the production year and putting their data together for the Great Lakes Fruit, Vegetable and Farm Market Expo, Dec. 8-10 in Grand Rapids, Mich.
It was interesting being there and getting a sneak preview of the subject matter.
Our interactive editor, Scott Christie, shot video while we were there, so you can listen to what Gut had to say about codling moth and his work with “attract and kill” methods.
We also learned at the field day that the blueberry planting at TNRC, the best research planting MSU entomologists and pathologists have to work with, will be pulled out. It’s about 1 percent infected with blueberry shock, an exotic (to Michigan) disease, discovered there this summer.
It is “too politically charged” to save, Wise said. The state government has a protocol designed to keep virus-infected blueberry plants out of the state. It is not known how these slipped in, but the station can’t afford to have them there – even for research purposes – in the heart of the largest cultivated blueberry producing area in the world.
This is the only site at TNRC where blueberries can grow, Wise said, and it will probably be replanted. It’ll be some years before mature bushes will be there for researchers.
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Bonus Video: Marvin's Gardens
