Avocado Lace Bug Spreads

Return to Drought

There has been a recent expansion of Avocado Lace Bug into parts of the Carpinteria area. It was more or less located in the San Diego coastal area. It spreads mainly with people.......

Read about it at the UC-IPM website and the observations of Mark Hoddle, IPM Specialist at UC Riverside.

https://ipm.ucanr.edu/agriculture/avocado/avocado-lace-bug/#gsc.tab=0

ALB does better in the slightly cooler more humid orchards in Oceanside when compared to the hotter inland Bonsall orchards.
In the lab, under a fluctuating 24 hr temperate cycle similar to an avocado orchard in Escondido, optimal temps for development are a daily average of around 31-32oC (88-90oF)
ALB life stage densities tend to be greater on leaves over June-Oct
% leaf infestation measures (i.e., the proportion of sampled leaves with ALB lifestages) tend to be peak over fall-winter (Sept-Feb), but ALB densities on leaves are not as high as what are seen over June-Oct, there are basically more leaves with ALB and those per leaf densities are lower that numbers counted over June-Oct.
Its hard to predict what the next season's ALB will be as lots of ALB are shed when leaves drop, but like persea mite, some manage to get back onto the new leaves to start the next round of infestations. Adults don't seem to be very flighty, well, at least they don't seem to exhibit mass flight activity that would suggest searching for new hosts as leaves deteriorate.

Keep your eyes open for a future edition of the CA Avocado Commission's magazine - From The Grove - for a more thorough discussion of the pest.

https://www.californiaavocadogrowers.com/publications/from-the-grove

images:

Adult

Adults, young, and fecal pellets

Leaf damage

ALB-Low-Res