News Stories

DAVIS -- What's bugging you? If you have eucalyptus trees in your backyard, chances are it's a newly arrived pest called a lerp psyllid. A grape grower in the San Joaquin Valley? Take your pick of two different mealybugs, also new arrivals among many other pests. Or maybe it's something less exotic like household ants creeping into your kitchen, snails and slugs slurping up your vegetable garden, or crabgrass colonizing your lawn. Truth is, some pest is always bugging somebody.

How we deal with these unwanted critters has changed dramatically. At the turn of the century whale oil, arsenic or kerosene may have been utilized. In the 1940s synthetic organic pesticides arrived. Now, a whole generation of newer technologies -- pheromone mating disruption, bioengineered plants and microbial pesticides -- have entered the scene. In California, the focal point for investigating new methods of pest control and addressing the related environmental and social issues they raise is the University of California's 20-year-old Statewide Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Project. IPM coordinates an impressive array of research -- 30 projects are currently funded in areas ranging from field ecology and cultural controls to biological control and decision support in commodities as varied as poultry, fruit trees and turf to tomatoes, cotton and rangeland.

Glimpses of the current status of this highly acclaimed program's accomplishments can be gleaned from its recently released annual report, 1999 UC IPM Update. A few of the highlights include:

• UC IPM researchers have found that using flowering plants and sticky barriers to exclude ants from grapevines will significantly reduce grape mealybugs and increase the abundance of beneficial parasitoids attacking the pests.

• UC IPM recently released a new interactive CD-ROM, Solving Garden and Landscape Problems, to help UC Master Gardeners, UC Cooperative Extension advisors and other pest experts find the least toxic management solutions to hundreds of garden and landscape problems. It will be made available to the general public in early 2000.

• The California Department of Food and Agriculture recently approved a UC IPM-developed solarization technique against harmful nematodes -- a critically needed alternative to the highly toxic fumigant methyl bromide. The technique may be used in commercial nursery operations in the San Joaquin Valley and desert areas.

• UC IPM's Pesticide Education Program (PEP) developed a workshop to educate health care providers about pesticide illnesses and injuries and related pesticide information, a tremendous success not only with physicians and clinic staff but also with farmworker advocacy groups, growers and workers' compensation insurance companies.

• UC IPM helped develop the California Tomato Network, a sophisticated field-level monitoring system utilizing computer technology and remote weather stations to predict blackmold and powdery mildew infestations.

• UC IPM supported a Berkeley entomologist to find biological control agents for a new invader, the eucalyptus lerp psyllid, and developed a Pest Notes leaflet for frustrated home gardeners and professional landscapers to deal with the sticky mess the insect leaves behind.

The annual report also updates the reader on its extensive online offerings through UC IPM's Web site (http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu). Information available includes pest management guidelines for 41 major crops, Pest Notes leaflets on more than 70 home and landscape pests, a weed photo gallery, degree-day calculator, weather databases, phenology models for different pests, crop disease models, UC IPM research results, PEP resources, California pesticide use summaries, publications catalog, annual reports since 1995 and a funded projects database.

To get more information about UC IPM's extensive research and educational programs and resources, log into www.ipm.ucdavis.edu or call them at (530) 752-8350.