The Almond Board of California (ABC) is gearing up to host a series of pest management workshops in the coming weeks. ABC Outreach and Education Specialist Gary Castillo said the events will be held from 8:30 a.m. to 11 a.m. with check-in beginning at 8:15 a.m. A total of four workshops are scheduled throughout the state, to give industry members more opportunities to participate.
“The target audience for this is anybody that’s involved in some of the pest management decisions inside the field,” Castillo noted. “That can range from PCAs to growers as well as anybody kind of involved in that decision making process.”
The first of the “Management of Key Pests in Your Orchard” workshop series will be held on March 12 at the Glenn Success Conference Center in Orland. The following day in Modesto, the March 13 workshop will take place at the Stanislaus County Harvest Hall. April 2 will be the third workshop in the series and will be held at the Merced County Farm Bureau. The final event will take place in Bakersfield on April 3 at the Kern Agriculture Pavilion.
Presentations will cover current integrated pest management (IPM) practices for new and emerging insect pests. “We’ll have a numerous amount of speakers ranging from Lauren Fann from the Almond Board, Abigail Welch from Semios, Thomas Martin from Trécé, Houston Wilson from UC Riverside, David Haviland and Jhalendra [Rijal] from UC ANR, and then Jesse Roseman from the Almond Board as well,” said Castillo.
Speakers will be highlighting pests such as navel orangeworm and the Carpophilus beetle. There will also be information on IPM incentives that are available from the Natural Resources Conservation Service. Castillo said the workshops will be a more intimate event to allow for more interaction among participants. “With some of these smaller events that we put on, we definitely encourage engagement from the audience,” Castillo explained.
Registration information for the pest management workshops is available at Almonds.com/events.
Listen to the segment below.
Brian German
Ag News Director / AgNet West