To get good mite control: Plan your potential spray program around pesticides that have minimal impact on biological control agents.
To get good mite control (cont from last issue):
•Plan your potential spray program around pesticides that have minimal impact on biological control agents.
•Use biological control agents to reduce reliance on pesticides. Pesticides should be used to support predator activity rather than rely on pesticides and hope that predators come to your rescue when you really need them after resistance has developed.
•Understand what mites are present and how their behaviours influence your monitoring techniques
•Monitor mite populations from green tip through to leaf fall in autumn
•Where two or more species are present record the percent of leaves infested for each species separately
•Calculate CLIDs for each species and also calculate the combined species CLIDs.
•Decide which species is more important or more difficult to control and choose a miticide that will give optimum control of that species and sufficient control of the secondary species.
•Pay careful attention to the slope of the CLIDs graphs, forecast weather, predator activity, and any critical crop management stages (especially harvest windows) and predict when you may need to spray early enough to keep the mite populations below the threshold CLIDs
•The threshold holds for the entire season, not individual spray dates
•Remember that you do not have to wipe them out, you just need to keep them below the threshold.
•Seek professional advice if you are unsure what to do.
See this article in Tree Fruit May 2019
