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Project Highlights

Topic: managing western tarnished plant bug in strawberries with trap crops

Using trap crops in organic strawberries
to control western tarnished plant bug

Investigator: Sean Swezey, Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, University of California-Santa Cruz

Funded Projects

Santa Cruz, California -- On California’s Central Coast, the principal cosmetic pest of strawberries is the western tarnished plant bug (WTPB). Organic strawberry growers have recently become interested in plantings of trap crops, which might simultaneously attract WTPB away from strawberry fields and increase levels of WTPB-associated predators and parasitoids. Objectives of this project were to explore the utility of trap crops to attract WTPB away from strawberry plants, to look at measures to control WTPB within the trap crops themselves, and to compare these control measures with traditional whole-field mechanical measures consisting of machine-mounted vacuums, known as bug vacs.

Alfalfa trap crop adjacent to strawberries in an organic strawberry field

For more information about this project:

Project summary
(3 pp, 154K pdf file)

Complete project report
Control of the western tarnished plant bug, Lygus hesperus (Knight) in an organic strawberry production systems using trap crops, mass-released parasitoids, and tractor-mounted vacuums
(22 pages, 300K, pdf file)

WTPB were found to prefer alfalfa trap crops to either a radish/mustard trap crop or the strawberry crop. A significant difference in WTPB counts from the alfalfa trap crop was always detected after a single pass vacuuming treatment when compared with pre-treatment counts with an average WTPB reduction of 70%. In addition, damage due to WTPB bug feeding in associated strawberry rows was (38-47%) compared with the growers’ whole-field vacuuming program, and vacuuming trap crop areas constituted a 75% energy savings over whole-field vacuuming programs.

Principal investigator:
Sean Swezey, University of California - Santa Cruz, Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems

Project locations and grower collaborators:
Miles Reiter, Driscoll Strawberry; Clint Miller, Driscoll Strawberry; Larry Eddings, Pacific Gold; Dale Coke, Coke Farms

Cooperating investigators:
Janet Bryer, Polly Goldman, Diego Nieto, William Settle, Daniel Swezey, Nicolas Swezey, Alexia Ruby and Ohri Yamada

Keywords: organic strawberries; western tarnished plant bug; lygus bug; trap crops; California; OFRF

OFRF funding:
$9,896, spring 2001

Project period:
2001 - 2002

Reported:
February 2005