In today’s Almond Matters, brought to you by Valent, the overall effectiveness of winter sanitation efforts will begin to come to light as temperatures warm up and growers consider their approach to navel orangeworm management. Field Market Research Representative for Valent USA, Tino Lopez said that paying attention to the life cycle of the pest will play an important role in control programs.
“Typically, we have three to four generations and we start to set out traps right about now, actually the end of March, early April if it’s warm, preferably you want to go early,” Lopez noted. “Generally, PCA’s will put out two types of traps. They’ll put egg traps to catch eggs and traps to catch male adults that are flying.”
For almonds, the most harmful generation is the third generation which typically coincides with hull split when the nuts are vulnerable to damage. Maintaining diligence with trapping efforts will help keep a better handle on population cycles. “Continuing to set the traps out there for the duration, refreshing them at least monthly, and having enough of them in the field so that you’re catching them is typically what a lot of the PCA’s will do,” said Lopez. “Use that to just determine when the next flight and when the next egg hatch is going to be.”
The most valuable method for effective navel orangeworm management took place over the winter and plays a significant role in what type of pest pressure will be seen come spring and summer. “We hopefully started with orchard sanitation and fundamentally that’s the most useful tool that you have is to make sure you get those mummy nuts out of there,” Lopez noted. “The other thing that goes with it, in terms of physical activity, is harvesting early where you can. So, if you typically can harvest before the third generation emerges, you’re going to be ahead of the game especially on the soft shells like nonpareils.”
Listen to the report below.