Western Integrated Pest Management Center

In some pear-growing regions in the Pacific Northwest, IPM is a widely accepted, effective and economical way to manage pear psylla and codling moth, the crop’s key insect pests. In the Wenatchee Valley, however, IPM adoption has been low and the barriers to adoption high. But researchers are working to change that.

Tiny aphids are causing outsized losses for chile pepper growers in Colorado, even though the insects don’t feed on that particular crop and don’t linger in it. Instead, aphids move through chile fields after nearby alfalfa fields are cut, transmitting alfalfa mosaic virus to the pepper plants. The insects aren’t in the crop long enough for insecticides to be effective, and because the aphids don’t stay in chile fields, neither would the beneficial insects that eat them.

So Colorado State University graduate student Lara Amiri-Kazaz is researching something novel: fear. 

If the fungal pathogen Botrytis cinerea had a job interview, it would tout itself as adaptable and resilient. Adaptable, because its related disease, Botrytis blight, affects multiple vegetable transplants, including tomatoes, broccoli and cabbage. Resilient, because its short life cycle and genetic diversity allow it to develop resistance to fungicides faster than other fungi. Those traits have made Botrytis blight one of the most common diseases in California nurseries.

It sounds like an ad for a 1950s drive-in horror movie: Zombie plants emerge from New Jersey bogs! Can experts stop their catastrophic cross-county crawl before it’s too late?  But this is not “The Day of the Triffids” meets “Creature from the Black Lagoon.” Instead, it’s the latest Western Integrated Pest Management Center-funded research, a bi-coastal project looking to keep West Coast cranberry farms safe from false blossom disease, an insect-spread pathogen that’s plaguing East Coast cranberry producers.

“If it’s so complex that it’s impossible, then no one wins.”

That was the key takeaway from a recent two-day workshop in Vancouver, Washington about implementing new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency pesticide-use rules to protect endangered and threatened species.

Hooved mammals – ungulates in scientific parlance – aren’t native to the archipelago but have been brought to the islands over the past centuries. Now, population explosions of wild pigs, feral sheep and goats, big-horned mouflon sheep and axis and black-tailed deer are altering ecosystems, affecting fisheries, imperiling agriculture and causing economic harm. New research aims to document how much damage those non-native ungulates are doing – the first step in understanding what could or should be done about it.

It’s the kind of situation that can spiral downhill quickly. Beekeepers providing hives for pollination feel their bees are suffering excessive losses and fear improper insecticide use is to blame. Growers insist they are following label requirements and using necessary insecticides correctly to protect the bees. Both sides believe they are doing everything right, yet the outcomes are all wrong.

"Electric mulch" uses small solar panels to charge stainless steel screens with a low-power electric current to prevent weed growth in vineyards, orchards or other high-value crops like blueberries. In early tests in New Mexico, it's working.

In an expansive field of organically grown blueberries at Humbug Farms in Independence, Oregon, the most interesting rows aren’t blueberries at all. Instead, they are carefully chosen rows of (mostly) native flowering shrubs that provide food for wild bees and habitat for beneficial insects. Hurray for the humble hedgerow.

As South Korean imports go, Ganaspis brasiliensis will never have the popular cachet of pop sensations BTS or TV dramas like Squid Game, but for small fruit growers the tiny wasp might become the biggest superstar of all. That’s because Ganaspis brasiliensis is a parasitic wasp that lays eggs into the larvae of the spotted-wing drosophila fruit fly, an invasive insect that’s been plaguing growers of small fruit and berries since it was accidentally introduced into the mainland United States in 2008.

Alfalfa-eating aphids are only about an eighth of an inch long. But the tiny sap-sucking insects are a serious pest for growers, capable of stunting or even killing alfalfa plants. In the field they’re difficult to see from even a few feet away, so the last thing you might think of using for research into biological control of aphids are satellites orbiting 300 miles above Earth. Yet that’s exactly what researchers at the University of Nevada, Reno are indeed using – and they’re seeing things from space you just can’t see from the ground.

When the Northern Giant Hornet was discovered in Washington state, state and federal officials mobilized quickly to try to eradicate it. Due to the efforts of that team, which included Dr. Jacqueline Serrano, an expert in detecting, decoding and synthesizing insect chemical signals, no nests or hornets have been found in the state since 2021.

Guam hasn't been so fortunate. Invaded in 2016 by a different giant hornet, the Great Banded Hornet, the island is in danger of having the invasive, predatory insect become firmly established, which could damage Guam's apiculture and agricultural industries. So it will be harder to eradicate – but with Western IPM Center funding, Serrano and Christopher Rosaria from the Guam Department of Agriculture’s Biosecurity Division are going to try.

When growers use a pesticide to control insects, they have a lot of information at their fingertips. The product’s label tells them what crops and pests the product can be used for, as well as the rate to apply and any temperature limits to be aware of. Biological control insects, like lacewings, don’t come with such labels.

This report documents integrated pest management improvements in the strawberry industry by comparing pest management strategic plans from 2003 and 2021, including adaptations to the myth bromide ban, newer insecticides that better align with IPM principles and technological advances including bug vacuums.

Reasons to like wine Number 462: It can be good for New Mexico’s native bees and other pollinators. Even though grapevines are largely self pollinating and don’t need insects like bees or butterflies to produce fruit, vineyards themselves can provide habitat for native pollinators and other insect species, benefitting both the grower and the environment. 

Call it puncturevine, goatheads, devil’s thorn or whatever creative collection of expletives you mutter after sitting, kneeling or stepping barefoot onto it, Tribulus terrestris is one unpleasant plant. But with funding from the Western Integrated Pest Management Center, a researcher in New Mexico is measuring the cold-hardiness of weevils from different climactic zones to see if biocontrol efforts in cool northern climes could be boosted by importing warm-weather weevils from southern deserts.

With the West in a state of permanent drought and under constant threat of wildfires, it’s more important than ever for land managers to control undesirable vegetation. For fire-prone communities scattered throughout the West’s tinder-dry hills and woods, it can be a matter of life and death. One tool that can help manage vegetation is grazing.

For weed scientists and growers, Western Australia is a cautionary tale. Herbicides failed, resistant weeds spread unchecked and non-chemical control methods had to be developed on the fly to keep the grain industry in business. As herbicide-resistant weeds spread in the United States, researchers are trying to adapt some of the lessons learned in Australia here at home, including harvest weed-seed control, before the situation gets as dire. 

Recent IPM extension projects in Oregon employed an approach called Adaptive Learner-Centered Education, which experts believe is well-suited for expanding IPM understanding.

In farming, as in medicine, an accurate diagnosis is critical. For a doctor to prescribe the correct treatment, they need to know the specific disease causing a patient’s symptoms. The same is true for growers. When they see disease symptoms in a field, they need to know the underlying cause in order to correctly treat their crop.

Recent trainings in Guam helped improve the ability of agricultural professionals and others in the Pacific islands to make those diagnoses.

Biting stable flies cause dairy cows to bunch tightly together in a defensive behavior, stressing the cows and reducing milk production. A multi-disciplinary team in California is measuring the impact and working to develop an IPM program to protect the cows and benefit producers.

Coffee leaf rust has come to Hawaii.

The damaging fungus was first tentatively identified on coffee plant samples collected on Maui two weeks ago and has also now been reported on the Hilo side of the Big Island. As of November 2, it hadn’t been confirmed in the coffee-growing area around Kona, which sits opposite Hilo on Hawaii.

Start with a heaping helping of weeds in an orchard owned by an electrical engineer, then add in a weed scientist and a dash of Western IPM Center funding. What you get is electric weed control – a promising (dare we say shocking?) new way to control weeds in certain landscapes.

In south-central Colorado’s high desert, Rockey Farms has followed a path toward increased sustainability. Beginning with integrated pest management, the multi-generational family farm has experimented and implemented one new farming practice after another, steadily increasing its sustainability, profitability, soil health and crop quality.

And it began with IPM.

Kochia is a tumbling weed plaguing growers and ranchers from Central Canada to West Texas.

“It’s salt tolerant, heat tolerant, cold tolerant,” said Kent Davis, a crop consultant with Crop Quest in Colorado. “I want to kill the damn stuff, there’s no question about it, but you have to admire it at the same time.”

Macadamia nuts are an identity crop for Hawaii, like chile in New Mexico or potatoes in Idaho. Macadamia orchards cover some 18,000 acres on Hawaii and generate $53 million annually. But since the arrival of the macadamia felted coccid in 2005, maintaining that production and profitability has become more difficult. Now IPM is showing growers how to manage the tiny scale insect before it causes branch dieback and kills trees.

On Hawaii, a dedicated group of cacao growers, processors and researchers are building a cacao industry aimed at producing distinctive, high-quality cacao, the raw ingredient the world's top chocolatiers seek to craft their best bars. Keeping pests off the islands is a necessary part of that plan.

On the island of Guam, species as different as cucumbers, sea turtles and bananas are all protected in one way or another by ironwood trees, a type of evergreen native to Australia. The problem is many of those trees are dying.

In 2010, the coffee berry borer threatened Hawaii's coffee industry. An IPM program that promotes end-of-season sanitation was developed by growers and researchers and has kept the industry thriving. 

Identification of pests and beneficials is one of the first principles of integrated pest management, and the core of a train-the-trainers program that’s been successfully improving the skills of young ag professionals in rural Oregon, Washington and Idaho since 2009.

In 2015, the Invasive Species Insects Subgroup focused on coconut rhinoceros beetle, an invasive insect spreading across the Pacific. In March of that year, a work group gathered after the Hawaiian Entomological Society meeting to share the latest information and research on the beetle.

The state that calls itself "The Last Best Place" has a lot to protect from pests: vast fields of wheat and barley driving its agriculture sector, miles of mountains, forests and rangeland forming an outdoor paradise, and clear rivers and lakes at the upper end of the North American watershed. Here's a look.

Pest managers are familiar with the concept of using degree days to predict pest outbreaks. Plants – at least in part – also develop based on temperature, so a team in Oregon is adapting a degree-day modeling system built for pest management to make a tool for vegetable growers to better plan their planting and harvesting dates.

Like many states, some of the biggest IPM challenges facing New Mexico are being caused by newly arrived invasive pests, including the Bagrada bug and spotted wing Drosophila. Here's a look at the current state of IPM in New Mexico, and some of the IPM research going on there.

Montana is known as "The Last Best Place." An outdoor paradise, and home to wheat, barley and pulse crop production, Montana actively promotes integrated pest management to protect its agriculture and natural areas.

Barn owls are big, beautiful biocontrol.

“Barn owls are rodent-killing machines,” said Sara Kross, an assistant professor in environmental studies at Sacramento State University. “They are natural predators of gophers and voles which can be really horrible pests for agriculture.”

The U.S. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has proposed lifting the domestic quarantine designed to slow the spread of emerald ash borer, an action that could speed the destructive insect’s introduction into Western states that have so far kept it at bay.

Wireworms are wrecking havoc in some western Washington farms. This video looks at a trap-cropping experiment designed to lure them away from valuable vegetables. 

For more than two decades, Christine Langley has successfully run Lopez Harvest organic farm on Lopez Island in Washington state’s famed San Juan Islands. But for most of that, she wasn’t fighting wireworms. Now they're her top pest problem.

When brown marmorated stink bug hit the Mid-Atlantic region, it wreaked havoc with the tree fruit industry and disrupted effective IPM programs. Elizabeth Beers and her colleagues at Washington State University are working to make sure that doesn’t happen again in Washington’s valuable apple and pear orchards.

Barn owls are rodent-killing machines - natural predators of gophers and voles and other rodent pests of agriculture. This video looks at new research helping growers use both the owls and chemicals, in concert and safely.

As herbicide-resistant weeds become more common across the country, researchers and growers are looking for other ways to control weeds. In Colorado, they’re looking at harvest weed-seed control, IPM-friendly methods designed to destroy or remove weed seeds during harvest.

As pests go, wild pigs are huge – and hugely effective.

Not very long ago, if you were planning a summer wedding or special occasion, one flower you could not get at any price was a peony. The elegant, lacy blooms simply weren’t available. Alaska changed all that.

For growers, a fundamental element of integrated pest management is knowing what pest and beneficial species are in your fields. But what if there’s an insect and no one knows if it’s good or bad? That was the question for apple growers about earwigs.

Proper identification of a disease is the critical first step for growers to apply the correct treatment. In peonies, proper disease identification was a problem. If a plant was diseased, growers assumed that their plants were sick with Botrytis gray mold. The reality was more complex.

Throughout the West, many native grasslands have been degraded – overgrazed, overtilled, burned or overrun by invasive weeds like Medusahead or cheatgrass. While many restoration efforts only look at plant communities or endangered species, this research looked at native spider and bee communities. 

As pollinating insects, bees get all the credit – but they don’t do all the work. new research is documenting the unsung heroes of the pollinating world.

Native predators like kestrels and barn owls can play a valuable role in controlling pests not only on farms, but also in parks, golf courses and large yards and gardens. While they rarely eliminate a pest problem, they can reduce the need for pesticide use and other pest-control measures.

As an ecosystem-transformer species, medusahead is among the worst weeds. Not only does it compete for resources with more desirable species, but it changes ecosystem function to favor its own survival at the expense of the entire ecosystem.

Researchers, ranchers, and land managers know that livestock grazing can be a valuable and selective noxious-weed management tool, and this guide summarizes all the effective techniques.

Conventional wisdom says cows don’t go up steep slopes. They don’t climb hills and don’t travel very far from water. But some cows never got that memo, and researchers are looking into whether naturally hill-climbing cows can provide production and environmental benefits in the rugged West.

Whether it's cattle with face flies or a dog with ticks, vets throughout the West can now easily find the available treatment options in their state thanks to a new website built with Western IPM Center funding.

An update to the Pest Management Strategic Plan for dry bulb storage onions shows progress against thrips and Iris yellow spot virus, but still challenges to overcome.

Bringing natural diversity to a farm can help boost production and benefit the bottom line. The concept is called functional agricultural biodiversity, and a work group in Oregon is helping Pacific Northwest farmers and conservationists know what plants to incorporate, insects to encourage and habitat to install to maximize their natural benefits.

For the past 15 years, researchers have been tracking pesticide use on cotton fields in the Southwest, and the reductions they've documented have been nothing short of remarkable.

Hop growers in the Northwest - as well as a sweet cherry, apple and other fruit growers around the nation - now have a new mating disruption tool to combat the Prionus beetle and its root-boring larvae, thanks to research funded in part by the Western IPM Center.

When an invasive species is first detected in an area, the initial response is critical. Like with a cancer, the correct early detection and response can make a big difference in controlling the spread and severity of the outbreak.

Utah is one of the most urbanized states in the nation, with 90 percent of the population living on just 1.1 percent of the land. It’s also the second driest state, has alkaline soils and the risk of drought is high every year. These factors drive Utah's cropping systems - and drive the way IPM programs are developed and delivered.

How important is it to keep weed seeds out of vegetable fields? Mexico State University's Brian Schutte recently looked at that very question. Funded by the Western IPM Center, Schutte studied one particular weed, tall morning glory, in Southwest chile pepper fields, and developed an economic model growers can use to see for themselves how managing the weed seed bank can help their operations.

Controlling pear psylla while also preserving pollinators and other beneficial insects emerged as the key pest-management challenges for growers in Washington and Oregon - and directly led to a "Psylla Summit" to address the challenge.

Farmworker safety training often comes with language challenges - but few places more so than Hawaii, where the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources at the University of Hawaii recently produced two pesticide-safety training chartsin English, Mandarin, Tagalog and Thai.

Rapid and accurate identification of weeds at the seedling stage can save producers and land managers time and money but most weed identification guides only provide information about the mature stage of the plants. Not this one.

Many integrated pest management practices are so widely adopted in Western agriculture they have become conventional pest management. That is one of the key findings of a new report by the Western Integrated Pest Management Center titled Adoption and Impacts of Integrated Pest Management in Agriculture in the Western United States.

Safflower, a low-value oil seed crop, is the key to an incredibly successful soil health and areawide integrated pest management program in California — and a great illustration of how IPM works. 

VIDEO: Trapping the heat of the sun to kill pathogens and weeds in the ground works in hot climates - but new plastics and research show it can also be effective in cooler areas like the Pacific Northwest. For organic vegetable growers, it could be a game-changer for weed control.

A lot of growers take steps to protect beneficial insects as part of their integrated pest management programs, but how many have speed limits? Alfalfa seed growers in Washington’s Walla Walla Valley do.

University of California, Riverside chemical ecologist Jocelyn Millar identifies the chemical signals insects use to communicate, then synthesizes versions of them to help monitor, trap or disrupt their activities. Lygus bug is just one of dozens of species Millar and his team are working on. The common thread is that they all communicate chemically, and decoding those chemical signals can create new ways to control those species where they are pests.

Alaska is huge, diverse, remote and still largely pristine. It's 2.3 times the size of Texas, with a population of just 738,000 people and 175,000 moose.

While small, the state's ag industry is important. Ornamentals, aquaculture, potatoes and cattle are top crops, and home-based and small-scale production help improve food security and diversity. Here's a little of what we saw and learned on a recent visit.

Nevada's state flag has the words "Battle Born" above a silver star and crossed sagebrush sprays, celebrating its creation during the American Civil War. Battle born is also a pretty good description of the efforts of many people working for state, federal and local agencies to keep invasive weeds in check in Nevada's challenging landscapes. Here's a look.

Utah is one of the most urbanized states in the nation, with 90 percent of the population living on just 1.1 percent of the land. It’s also the second driest state, averaging less than 10 inches of rainfall a year, and has alkaline soils with low organic matter. It’s a challenging environment to farm in. Keeping invasive pests out of Utah - and minimizing the damage they cause once they arrive - is a major focus.

In New Mexico, the chile pepper is king. Hay is grown on 40 times the acreage and pecans rack up nearly 4.5 times the farm sales, but you don’t see either of those crops on the “Welcome to New Mexico” signs as you drive into the state. You see red and green chile peppers.

Chile isn’t a crop, it’s culture. Like Florida citrus and Idaho potatoes, New Mexico’s identity is tied to a crop.

The Western IPM Center’s IPM Adoption and Impacts Assessment Work Group, a collection of natural and social scientists from across the country, created online resources showing IPM researchers how to conduct basic impact assessments.

The need to protect and conserve beneficial insects - especially pollinators - is being increasingly recognized. The Western IPM Center led the Pacific Pollinator Protection Program, a Center signature project, to help Pacific Island growers protect these valuable species.

To protect water sources from pollution by pesticides, one of the first Western IPM Center signature projects created training materials for proper pesticide application for agriculture, professional landscapers and homeowners. In a little more than one year, the slides were downloaded 106 times in 20 U.S. states and one Canadian province, and used to train more than 1,400 people.

Organic vegetable growers may finally have an economical way to manage weeds other than slow and costly hand weeding. That solution is soil solarization – a technique proven effective in hotter climates, but new plastics and research are showing it can also work in the cooler Pacific Northwest.

Every sample that comes to the Schutter Diagnostic Lab at Montana State University is an opportunity to teach someone else about integrated pest management.

In Kings County, California, safflower is an important rotational crop that improves the soil health and makes farming more productive. It's also the key to an areawide IPM program that manages pests and reduces pesticide sprays.

When the fungal disease powdery mildew first appeared in hop yards in Oregon in the late 1990s, it was devastating from both a production and integrated pest management standpoint. In the 20 years since that initial outbreak, researchers and growers have learned a lot about the disease and how to manage it. Just in the past few years, fungicide applications have dropped about 40 percent.

A multi-state program in the Columbia River Basin is improving agricultural practices by training young ag professionals in integrated pest management.

VIDEO: Hops growers in Oregon have been battling powdery mildew for nearly 20 years. But new research into the fungal disease has already cut fungicide application by 40 percent, and shows the potential of a coordinated, areawide approach in essentially eliminating it.

That birds can be a pest for fruit growers is no surprise. But what about to cows? Are birds a pest on dairies? Do they bother the milk cows? And do they cause economic losses? Researchers in Washington state are trying to find out.

Eco-label programs  have clear benefits and promote more sustainable pest-management and growing practices. They also provide certain benefits for growers but have downsides as well. Significant differences between the programs can make judging eco labels challenging for consumers, and with dozens of similar yet competing certification programs and standards, chaos is likely for the foreseeable future.