Pest Management & Plant Health

I have received a handful of calls this season with concerns about trash bugs, a catch all term for various soil invertebrates. These soil invertebrates include root maggots, springtails, bulb mites, and symphylans, all which will happily feed on decomposing plant debris, i.e., trash.

With rice pushing fully through the water and with many fields now a vibrant green, tadpole shrimp season has passed in California's rice fields.

Many of us at UC IPM are cat lovers and owners. Cats are popular household pets that bring joy and companionship to many families. Feral cats, on the other hand, can cause problems in our communities and around our homes and gardens. Feral cats are unsocialized, unowned cats that live outdoors.

Professor Jerry Alan Powell, an international authority on Lepidoptera and a longtime director of the Essig Museum of Entomology, UC Berkeley, died July 8 in Berkeley at age 90.

La Universidad de California en Davis dio a conocer cinco nuevas variedades de fresas que son resistentes a la enfermedad de marchitamiento por Fusarium y tienen un alto grado de produccin y una calidad de fruta mejorada.

The Urban & Community IPM Webinar Series has several exciting webinars coming up this summer and fall. These webinars occur on the third Thursday of every month from 12:00 to 1:00pm PDT.

Perfect timing.

Pistachio production has been expanding, particularly into marginal soils with high salts, boron, and even sodic conditions. One plant that is endemic to these conditions, alkaliweed, has been reported in these orchards.

A UC Davis research team has discovered that both a harmful plant bacterium and a parasitic worm can mimic a plant peptide hormone to enhance their ability to infect plants.

Brake On! is a preemergence herbicide registered in blueberry and other horticultural crops in Oregon and Washington but not in California. Fluridone, the active ingredient of Brake On! inhibits carotenoid biosynthesis in the phytoene desaturase enzyme step.