Hopefully my bad endeavor at a “ Your Momma ” joke will get your aid , because this is an important spot .
Ongoing enquiry by Rose Buitenhuis ’ Lab at Vineland has shown that anincredible number of thripid and spider mites come in on import florist’s chrysanthemum cutting . Here ’s the goop and what you’re able to do about it .
The Issue:
To count for pesterer problems arriving from the U.S. , the Buitenhuis team wash ma cuttingsimported from Florida and California(supplied by Judy Colley , Plant Products ) at 1 day military post - receipt and then 7 days post - receipt , to catch any insects that needed clip to brood out .
Out of the13 batches of mum cuttings tested , 12 of these ( i.e.92 % ) were infest with either spider soupcon or thrips ( or both),with numbersas high as 76 thrips/100 cuttings(see Fig . 1 , below ) .
What it Means:
Just think – if you import 10 thousand cutting / hebdomad for your mum course of study , you might be walking almost 8000 thrip directly into your glasshouse each week .
likewise , you could be bringing inup to 2000 spider mites / hebdomad , which can be just as difficult ( or even more unmanageable ) to control than thrips .
Can we just chalk this up to a “ big pest season ” by the propagators or something ? unluckily , no , becausethis is not a young finding . In 2011 , scholar Wendy Romero found like high numbers of thrips on import mum cuttingsas part of her postgraduate dissertation work .
Thrips damage on mums.
I say we need to see this as an on-going terror to our industry , especially see both these pests are in all probability arriving with a gamy degree of resistance to pesticide .
So what to do?
The only way to really protect yourself is toASSUME YOUR CUTTINGS HAVE thrip AND SPIDER MITES – LOTS OF THEM – and that they are already resistant to all chemical controller options .
Echoinglast hebdomad ’s post , this meansstarting preventative biological control programme now . This includes dipping cutting as soon as they do in the door to bump off thripid / spider mite larva and adults , and free biologic control agents right on the rooting bench to overtake the “ newborns ” the right way aside . Bios should be retain out into the crop until finishing , since petal damage can occur quickly .
More information on thrips biocontrol can be foundhereandhere ; more entropy on wanderer mite biologic control can be foundhere .
Fig. 1. Number of pests (thrips or spider mites) found on imported mum cuttings 1 or 7 days after receipt. Data courtesy of R. Buitenhuis, VRIC. Each bar represents a different source or batch. Batches were tested on May 5 and 17th, 2016.
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Damage from two-spotted spider mites. We now know that these pests come in on infested mum cuttings imported from the U.S.
