Ongoing research

"When's the next public tour of Kate Frey's garden?" That's a question we're often asked and now we have an answer: Saturday, Oct. 7.

The University of California Cooperative Extension conducted an Avocado Pest Management Round Table grower meeting in Fallbrook, CA on September 28, 2017. Approximately 64 growers, industry, Pest Control Advisors, and other stakeholders were present.

It's 6 a.m. Do you know where your praying mantids are? Well, yes. Two of them. Just before dawn broke, we walked around our pollinator (and prey) garden and spotted a pencil-thin male mantis, Stagmomantis limbata, silhouetted on the milkweed.

Intriguing topic: social evolution in social insects... The UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology has booked associate professor of biology Tim Linksvayer of the University of Pennsylvania for a seminar on Genomic Signatures of Social Evolution in Social Insects" on Wednesday, Oct. 4.

Avocado Trunk Cankers 2016/17 was a normal rainfall year in the avocado growing region of California. But this was on top of lots of winters with such low rain amounts that there was not adequate salt leaching. No rain, no leaching.

Beekeepers circled biologist Randy Oliver, commercial beekeeper, scientist, writer and educator, as he held court in the apiary of the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility, University of California,Davis.

The western tarnished plant bug or lygus bug (Lygus hesperus) continues to be a major pest of strawberry on the Central Coast. Most growers typically rely on chemical or biological pesticides to manage pest.

Here's the latest issue of the Lassen Farm Advisor's Update newsletter from Tom Getts, Weed Ecology and Cropping Systems Farm Advisor.

Recently a grower called up with a beautiful scale that the PCA couldn't identify. I could just marvel at the beauty of it and wondered what in the heck it was. It didn't look like any scale I had seen in the area and others who were queried didn't know either.

IMAGE: Orbicules or "Ubisch bodies " (300 - 600nm granules), characteristics of Cupressaceae pollen, are visible on the surface of the exine (outer membrane).