Research is looking into a bug vacuum to help California strawberry growers control lygus bug damage.
The lygus bug remains a major problem for strawberry growers in the coastal producing areas of the state. “Yeah that lygus bug is just causing havoc out there. We’re losing anywhere from $150 million to $240 million because that lygus bug gets in there and deforms the strawberry,” says California Strawberry Commission President Rick Tomlinson.
“In addition to working with the pest control advisers, we have also been doing some in-house research, and one of the promising areas has been the bug vacuums,” Tomlinson said. “We’ve been looking at how to improve the design efficiency of the vacuum and we are having big improvements, still not enough and we still need more, but we are definitely making big improvements with the vacuums.”