Home Page

The purpose of this project is to demonstrate the economic and environmental benefits of treatment with hot water for eradication of invasive pests in the California nursery industry. California is one of the leading states of floriculture and nursery crop production in the U.S. (Carmen, 2011), but at present, the preferred method for pest eradication is the use of pesticides or plant destruction, due to mandatory regulations. However, treatment with hot water has effectively been used to manage invasive pests causing minimal or no damage to treated plants in Hawaii (Hara et al., 2010).