- Author: Ben Faber
The avocado lace bug (Pseudacysta perseae, family Tingidae) occurs in the Caribbean, French Guyana, Mexico, and southeastern United States. As of 2006, in California it occurs only in San Diego County. Also known as the camphor lace bug, this pest feeds on certain plants in the family Lauraceae. Hosts are the avocado fruit tree (Persea americana), other Persea species such as red bay (P. borbonia), and camphor tree (Cinnamomum camphora), which is grown as a landscape ornamental and commercially for its aromatic extracts.
Recently, Dr. Mark Hoddle from UC Riverside presented an update on the bug and its potential for spread in California. Hoddle is a biocontrol specialist who has done extensive work on this pest, as well as many other pests that afflict plants in this state. Here him:
And while you are at, you might check out the numerous other videos on file at UC IPM's "Ask The Ag Experts" website.
photo: Avocado lace bug, Pseudacysta perseae, adults, nymphs, and eggs under black excrement.
Photo by David Rosen.
- Author: Ben Faber
The redbay ambrosia beetle, Xyleborus glabratus, and its fungal symbiont, Raffaelea lauricola (Rl), were introduced into Port Wentworth, Georgia, USA, in infested wood packing material from Asia during 2002. This insect-disease complex, commonly called laurel wilt (LW), affects trees in the Lauraceae family and spreads through natural areas by redbay ambrosia beetle movement and anthropogenic movement of infested wood products (e.g., firewood, wood-turners wood, and BBQ smoke-wood). Plant hosts of the redbay ambrosia beetle-Rl complex include at least ten native lauraceous woody species (e.g., redbay [Persea borbonia] and swamp- bay [P. palustris]) in Florida, as well as non-native species such as camphor (Cinnamomum camphora), avocado (P. americana), and potentially California bay (Umbellularia californica). By February 2010, redbay ambrosia beetles were detected in a natural area 21 miles (33.7 km) north of the south Florida avocado production area (125 sq. miles; 324 sq. km) in Miami-Dade County. In 2011, the first confirmed swampbay tree to succumb to LW was documented in this natural area, and by 2012 LW was detected in a commercial avocado grove in Homestead, Florida.
Now everything we know about this disease that affects avocados and other laurel relatives is at one website - articles, videos, webinars, maps. Check it out: https://trec.ifas.ufl.edu/faculty/dr-crane-lw-ab-website/lw-ab/
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- Author: Ben Faber
For quite some time, farmers and researchers have been focusing on how to bind carbon to soil. Doing so makes food crops more nutritious and increases yields.
However, because carbon is converted into CO2 when it enters the atmosphere, there is a significant climate benefit to capturing carbon in soil as well.
Too much carbon finds its way into the atmosphere. Should we fail to reverse this unfortunate trend, we will fail to achieve the Paris Agreement's goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by 2030, according to CONCITO, Denmark's Green Think Tank.
As such, it is important to find new ways of sequestering carbon in soil. This is where a team of researchers from the University of Copenhagen and the Technical University of Munich enter the picture.
In their new study, they argue for the potential of simply allowing agricultural crop residues to rot in fields.
"Fragments of dead plants in soil are often considered as fast food for microbes and fungi. But our study demonstrates that plant residues actually play a more significant role in forming and sequestering carbon in soil than what was once thought," explains Kristina Witzgall, a PhD Candidate at the Technical University of Munich and the study's lead author.
In the past, researchers mainly focused on carbon storage in the surfaces of minerals like clay. However, the new results demonstrate that plant residues themselves have the ability to store carbon, and perhaps for longer than once supposed.
This is because a number of important processes take place directly upon the surface of these plant remains.
"We demonstrate that agricultural crop residues are absolutely central to carbon storage and that we should use them in a much more calculated way in the future. Plant residues make it possible for carbon, in all likelihood, to be stored in soil for roughly four times longer than if they aren't added," states Carsten Müller, the study's co-author and an associate professor at the University of Copenhagen's Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management.
Fungi and soil clumps store carbon
To understand how plant residue sequesters carbon, it is important to know that plant tissue already contains carbon absorbed by plants from the atmosphere via photosynthesis. As plant matter rots, carbon can be transferred into the soil in a number of ways.
"Our analysis shows that plant residues, as they interact with fungi, play a surprisingly large role in carbon storage. As fungi fling their white strands around plant fragments, they 'glue' them together with the soil. The fungi then consume the carbon found in the plant matter. In doing so, they store carbon in the soil," explains Carsten Müller.
In addition to fungi, the researchers' analyses also show that the soil structure itself determines the amount of carbon that can be stored.
"When soil is glued together in large hard lumps by the stickiness of bacteria and fungi, plant residues are shielded from being consumed by bacteria and fungi, which would otherwise eat and then emit some of the carbon as CO2 into the atmosphere," says Kristina Witzgall.
She goes on to say that while carbon can be stored in soil from weeks to a thousand years, the usual duration is about 50 years.
Reducing CO2 in the future
The method of leaving crop residues like stalks, stubble and leaves to rot is not unheard of when it comes to enhancing agricultural land.
However, deploying rotten plants as a tool to store carbon should be taken more seriously and considered as a strategy to be expanded, according to the researchers behind the new study.
"The fertile and climate-friendly agricultural lands of the future should use crop residue as a way of sequestering carbon. We will also be conducting experiments where we add rotten plant matter deeper into the soil, which will allow carbon to be stored for even longer periods of time," says Carsten Müller.
If we work to create better conditions for carbon sequestration in soil, we could store between 0.8 and 1.5 gigatonnes of carbon annually. By comparison, the world's population has emitted 4.9 gigatonnes of carbon per year over the past 10 years.
All in all, the researchers' findings can be used to understand the important role and promise of crop residues for carbon storage in the future.
However, Kristina Witzgall goes on to say that a variety of initiatives are needed to increase carbon sequestration, such as crops that can absorb atmospheric carbon and the restoration of lost forests.
Read the whole story: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-24192-8
Images:
Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images of the interface of plant litter (POM) and soil minerals, where soil minerals are (a) attached to the litter surface (scale bar = 100 µm) and (b) enmeshed with fungal hyphae and extracellular polymeric substances (EPS; scale bar = 10 µm). Similar images were obtained from at least 10 independent locations in each soil texture.
- Author: Ben Faber
1 to 20 of 47,867 Full-Text results on Avocado
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/ls?field1=ocr;q1=avocado;a=srchls;lmt=ft
47,867 full text articles and books on avocado. The digital world brings more avocado information to you. In the case of avocado, 47,867 citations with full text. You want links to loquat? Same thing, but only 20,379 citations. This is what you get when you go to the HathiTrust Digital Library. This is a collaboration among a lot of different academic institutions to make these obscure, but still valuable sources of information available to all.
Check it out. It's not just fruit trees, but gobs of other publications on a range of topics
A bibliography on the avocado (Persea americana Miller)
Published
1950
Author
Condit, Ira J. b. 1883.
A bibliography on the avocado (Persea americana Miller) [by] Ira J. Condit
Published
1939
Author
Condit, Ira J. b. 1883.
Between separation and integration : the avocado sector in California and Mexico, 1911-2011 / by Maria Michaela Burke Gould
Published
2011
Author
Gould, Maria Michaela Burke.
How to-- : Calavo avocado recipes
Published
1969
Leaflet University of California, Division of Agricultural Sciences no.2251 1975
Published
1975
Annual report of the California Avocado Association for the year .. 1915-1916
Published
1916
Author
California Avocado Association.
Annual report of the California Avocado Association for the year .. 1917-1919
Published
1919
Author
California Avocado Association.
Bulletin - University of Florida, Agricultural Experiment Stations no. 605A
Published
Author
University of Florida. Agricultural Experiment Station.
Annual report of the California Avocado Association for the year .. 1915-1920
Published
1920
Author
California Avocado Association.
The avocado : its insect enemies and how to combat them G.F. Moznette
Published
1922
Author
Moznette, G. F. 1890-
Yearbook of the California Avocado Society for the year ... 1917
Published
1917
Author
California Avocado Society.
The avocado : its insect enemies and how to combat them G.F. Moznette v.1261(1922)
Published
1922
Author
Moznette, G. F. 1890-
Special report on maturity standards for avocados.
Published
1958
Author
California. Legislature. Joint Committee on Agriculture and Livestock Problems.
Farmers' bulletin c.1 no.1261
Published
Author
United States. Department of Agriculture.
Yearbook of the California Avocado Society for the year ... 1916
Published
1916
Author
California Avocado Society.
The California avocado industry / Robert W. Hodgson
Published
1930
Author
Hodgson, Robert W. 1893-1966.
[Records and briefs of the United States Supreme Court]. flo
Published
Avocado diseases George A. Zentmyer ... [et al.].
Published
1965
Annual report of the California Avocado Association for the year .. 1920-21
Published
1921
Author
California Avocado Association.
Avocado pests / Walter Ebeling, Roy J. Pence
Published
1953
Author
Ebeling, Walter, 1907-
The following is a pest rating proposal by Kyle Beucke (CDFA)” with some photographs by Martin Hauser (CDFA) and Iain MacGowan:
On June 10, 2021, a resident in Pasadena (Los Angeles County) submitted a fig with pupae to county agricultural personnel. The pupae were confirmed as Silba adipata with molecular techniques. On June 21, 2021, a resident in Goleta (Santa Barbara County) submitted figs with larvae to county agricultural personnel. These were also confirmed as S. adipata with molecular techniques. On June 24, 2021, a larva from a fig at the Goleta residence was collected by state (CDFA) personnel and this was confirmed as S. adipata with molecular techniques. On June 29, 2021, an adult male was confirmed as S. adipata via morphology of the genitalia. Further finds of S. adipata were made in Orange and Ventura counties. Silba adipata was not previously known to be established in the New World and it has not been rated. Therefore, a pest rating proposal is needed.
History & Status:
Background: Adult Silba adipata are black shining flies 3.5-4.5 mm in length. Adults feed on exudates of figs and fig tree sap and possibly in flowers of other plants. Edible fig (Ficus carica) is the only known larval host, and both figs and caprifigs are attacked. Female flies oviposit groups of eggs under the scales of the ostiole of the fruit, and unripe fruits are reported to be preferred for oviposition. Oviposition is reported to primarily occur on figs that are in a shaded position. Adult activity is reported to be greatest early in the morning and late in the afternoon, when temperatures are lower. Larvae feed inside the fruit, and this often results in premature fruit drop. Larvae can complete development in dropped fruit, and they emerge from emergence holes approximately 1 mm in diameter to pupate in the soil (Abbes et al., 2021; Katsoyannos, 1983; M. Hauser, pers. comm.). There are reportedly 4-6 generations per year (Katsoyannos and Guerin, 1984). Adults are active in Turkey from May to November (Tutmuş, 2013).
Infestations by S. adipata caused fruit drop in Slovenia, but impact varied by location and fig variety (Rote et al., 2017). In Tunisia, it caused “massive” fruit dropand infestation rates (% of fruits infested) exceeded 80% in some cases. All varieties of figs there were reported to be susceptible (Abbes et al., 2021).
Hexanol and ammonium sulfate (use together gives three-fold increase over either alone) are attractive when used in McPhail traps (Katsoyannos and Guerin, 1984). Tutmuş(2013) reported attraction of these lures to be increased greatly by the addition of fig “milk” (presumably sap).Regarding control, Abbes et al. (2021) suggested bait sprays, mass trapping, netting the fruits, and burying dropped fruit to limit development of larvae as potential control techniques. The pesticide DelegateTM250 WG is labeled for control of S. adipata on figs in South Africa (Corteva).
Worldwide Distribution: Silba adipata is reported to be native to the Mediterranean region and the Middle East. Its distribution includes: Africa: Egypt, South Africa (introduced), Tunisia; Asia: Israel, Syria, Turkey; Europe: Italy, Malta, Slovenia (introduced); North America: United States (California) (Abbes et al., 2021; D'Antonio and Fimiani, 1988; Giliomee, 2011; MacGowan and Freidberg, 2008; Mifsud et al., 2012; Rot et al., 2017; Tutmuş, 2013). It was found in Morelos, Mexico in March 2020, but the status of this eradication is not known (United States Department of Agriculture).
Black Fly Damage
Black Fly Life Stages
References:
Abbes, K., Hafsi, A., Harbi, A., Mars, M., and Chermiti, B. 2021. The black fig fly Silba adipata (Diptera: Lonchaeidae) as an emerging pest in Tunisia: preliminary data on geographic distribution, bioecology and damage. Phytoparasitica. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12600-020-00871-y
Corteva. Accessed July 2, 2021: https://www.corteva.co.za/content/dam/dpagco/corteva/za/za/en/products/files/DELEGATE_ 250_WG_2020-02-05.pdf
D'Antonio, C. and Fimiani, P. 1988. Approccio ad un inventario entomofaunistico Dell'Isola di Vivara (NA). Noto preliminare. (1° contributo). Annuario del Museo Zoologico della Università di Napoli 26:155-170.
Giliomee, J. H. 2011. Recent establishment of many alien insects in South Africa –a cause for concern. African Entomology 19:151-155.
Katsoyannos, B. I. 1983. Field observations on the biology and behavior of the black fig fly Silba adipata McAlpine (Diptera, Lonchaeidae), and trapping experiments. Zeitschrift für Angewandte Entomologie 95:471-476
Katsoyannos, B. I. and Guerin, P. M. 1984. Hexanol: a potent attractant for the black fly, Silba adipata. Entomologia Experimentalis et Applicata 35:71-74.
MacGowan, I. and Freidberg, A. 2008. The Lonchaeidae (Diptera) of Israel, with descriptions of three new species. Israel Journal of Entomology 38:61-92.
Mifsud, D., Falzon, A., Malumphy, C., de Lillo, E., Vovlas, N., and Porcelli, F. 2012. On some arthropods associated with Ficus species (Moraceae) in the Maltese Islands. Bulletin of the Entomological Society of Malta 5:5-34.
Rot, M., Žežlina, I., Jančar, M., and Seljak, G. 2017. Črna figova muha (Silba adipata McAlpine, 1956 [Diptera, Lonchaeidae]) je zastopana tudi v Sloveniji. Zbornik predavanj in referatov 13:47-52.
Tutmuş, E. 2013. Determination of distribution, population fluctuations and damage density of Silba adipata McAlpine (=Lonchaea aristella Becker) (Diptera: Lonchaeidae_ in fig orchards in Aydin. Master'sthesis, Adnan Menderes University, Aydin, Turkey. Accessed June 30, 2021: http://adudspace.adu.edu.tr:8080/xmlui/handle/11607/643
United States Department of Agriculture. APHIS Amends Import Requirements for Fresh Fig (Ficus carica) Fruit from Mexico. Accessed June 29, 2021: https://www.aphis.usda.gov/import_export/plants/plant_imports/federal_order/downloads/2 020/DA-2020-19.pdf
READ the CDFA Alert: https://blogs.cdfa.ca.gov/Section3162/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Silba-adipata.pdf
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