Advantages of Smart Pest Traps in Your Nut Orchard
If you really want to understand the value of automatic, or “intelligent,” pest traps, Allen Fetters says you should consider how it goes today for the average nut grower, writes David Eddy at Growing Produce.
Say the grower gets a Thursday trap count from his pest control adviser showing a lot of pests were caught, says Fetters, the Principal at AGceleration, a consulting service in Bakersfield, CA, specializing in agricultural technology and innovations.
“But those pests in the trap — did I catch them Wednesday night, or was it last Friday? If it was last Friday, you could be seven days behind when most moths were caught in the trap,” he says. “Having that knowledge of just when those moths were coming in is critical in making pesticide applications.”
Real-time knowledge and awareness of what’s happening in your orchard is critical, and with the typical, manual trapping system you’re getting that information just weekly. With automatic trapping, you’re getting it every day — or even more often if you really want it — so it helps enable you to finely tune when that peak flight will occur so you can properly time your insect applications.
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“Remote sensing of pests really comes into play in knowing when the pest flight is occurring,” says Fetters. “Especially in utilizing IPM (integrated pest management), because with softer chemistries, timing is much more critical, and this allows you to get the right timing. You’re going to need solutions like this to hone in on how much you really need to spray.”
Continue reading at Growing Produce.
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