General situation We're a little later than normal kicking off this season's projections for thrips, but the season is off to a slow start so we're not in too bad a position. It's still cold overnight. It has also been wet, so we can expect a slow start for thrips, and soil-borne pupae populations have probably taken a hit with soils being saturated for a long period. Field access might be an issue in some areas because of water-logging, delaying planting. The current projections for the season, based on ocean surface temperatures, are for a very hot summer so we might ramp up very fast once the wet season storms finally come to an end. Growers in northern counties should remember that there are now Resistance Breaking (RB) strains in the region, so resistant varieties might not stand up to TSWV without protection. As always, we'll be focusing our attention on suppressing the 3rd or 4th generation of thrips depending on whether we see TSWV early.
Thrips population development Taking our usual January 1 start date, it looks like generation 1 adults probably peaked last week. Assuming things start warming up soon, we're predicting generation 2 adults will peak around May 11th. We don't want to make projections any further ahead than that until we see if the weather is going to settle into its summer pattern.