Scaffolds 2024 Digest: Week 5 

This post is a text digest of the Scaffolds Podcast. To listen to the original episode, visit the following link: Scaffolds Podcast on Spotify

 

Monique Rivera: Welcome to season two of scaffolds. This is Monique Rivera, your host and assistant professor of entomology at Cornell AgriTech. Cohosting with me is my pathology counterpart, Kerik Cox, who’s an associate professor of plant pathology. This year we will also be joined by Kelsey Tobin, a postdoctoral researcher in my lab, and occasionally also by Anna Wallis, our New York State fruit IPM coordinator. On this episode, I give some quick entomology updates and then talk about San Jose scale mating disruption with my colleague and friend, Dr. Juliana Wilson from Michigan State University. Kerik continues with our apple scab and fire blight forecasting with a bonus outlook on the 2024 fire blight season overall. And last but not least, the state of the state update from Anna Wallis on degree day accumulations and phenology around the state.

Monique Rivera: Okay, just a couple quick updates from the entomology side of things before we get into talking to Dr. Juliana Wilson. So first, we found our first codling moth here at AgriTech. This is a little early, but I think our infestation levels are quite high at AgriTech as it’s not really collectively managed, so it’s a good place to detect first flights. Also, across the state, you know in the Hudson Valley and also here, we have found black stem borer flying. And I think that there’s a bit of word or sort of a semi-consensus that ambrosia beetle issues are managed if you manage water and other stressors. That’s not really what we’re finding and it’s not necessarily true. It’s not always clear what’s stressing the trees, unless it’s something super obvious like flooding, of course. But some areas due to topography have just wetter and drier areas in a way that tiling can’t necessarily help. So basically, the long and short of it is if you have a problem with ambrosia beetles, you know that it’s still a problem, and if you don’t have a problem with them, then you think that it is resolved or not a problem for you. So other than that, and you’ll hear this also in the discussion with Dr. Juliana Wilson, woolly apple aphids are blowing up. There’s tons of aerial colonies already, including in Michigan, where it’s supposedly slightly cooler than here, but not necessarily with the climate flux. That’s my update in terms of what’s going on in entomology. And now we’ll be joined by Dr. Juliana Wilson.

 

Monique Rivera Interviews Dr. Julianna Wilson

Monique Rivera: So today I’m here with Julianna Wilson. She’s an assistant professor of tree fruit entomology at Michigan State University. Hi, Juliana.

Julianna Wilson: Hello.

Monique Rivera: So, what I really wanted to talk to you about today is I’m pretty sure that you’re the only one in the eastern seaboard that’s worked on this, but San Jose scale mating disruption, it is that time of the year when we’re really thinking about that. So, I was wondering if you could tell me about testing this product and what your overall thoughts on it were.

Julianna Wilson: Yeah, sure. So we tested products that were in development by Pacific Biocontrol – Shin-Etsu is the company that provides it, and these would be the Isomate dispensers that people are probably familiar with. They’re the red tube style small media disruption dispensers that are used for codling moth and OFM and some other similar things in tree fruit. So they were developing this product, trying to figure out what the dispenser density should be like for this particular pest, and so we were testing that. The other company that is also working on this as a product is Trece. We were testing their meso-dispensers and then also their puzzle style ones, which are smaller and trying to look at different densities of those and what works best. This was all done in apple, and then there was also a project being done in sweet cherry, which hasn’t been published yet – that was led by Emily Pochubay when she was with Michigan State University Extension. But at any rate, what we’ve been finding is that unlike lepidopteran pests, we can achieve disruption on a much smaller scale, so you can do this on quarter acre, half acre blocks in orchards of that size, and get trap shutdown of males in traps. So, I guess we should back up and say San Jose scale is really different from a lepidopteran pest, in that the females stay sedentary under these scales and they’re not moving, but they’re like sending out a signal calling for males to find them. And the males are super tiny and weak flyers, and we think they don’t travel very far from where they emerge in the first place. So that’s why we can use this on such a small scale. You know, males can’t find the females in this small area that we’re running these studies. So Pacific Bio and Trece, they’re still working out the product registration for this, submitting their packages through the EPA to get them registered for use, so I’m not exactly sure what dispenser density they’re going to market, but we were finding 100 dispensers of the Isomate product per acre would be enough to achieve disruption. And, you know, it hasn’t been published yet, but in sweet cherry Emily was testing a carryover effect where she would put them out in year one, and this was at 200 dispensers per density. And the following season, still see an effect on male flight in these cherry orchards, which is really cool, and I keep encouraging her to try to get that published, but she has a new job somewhere else, so it’s been kind of delayed. But at any rate, it’s a very easy pest to disrupt, unlike some of our moth pests that are stronger flyers are coming from the orchard margins, colonizing, recolonizing basically from outside. So, with this thing that’s really tied in with apple phenology, crop phenology, and sedentary for the most part, the females aren’t. This tool is really effective, and so I’m really excited about the fact that they’re trying to get it registered through the EPA. That process is really slow right now, not because of the companies, but because of the EPA just being really backlogged on a lot of things.

Monique Rivera: So, San Jose scale kind of has a pretty tight window to really get things set up, even when you’re just trying to track them normally. So what would you say is really the window? Like, what time of the year, approximately, or related to phenology? Like, does this get applied when we’re still dormant?

Julianna Wilson: Yeah, so we would be putting these up at the same timing as the codling moth dispenser. So if you’re familiar with mating disruption for codling moth, the timing would be at the same time. I was even talking with Pacific Bio about maybe there’d be a way to tie in those two together. Like, if there was a dispenser that had both, I don’t know if that would be in conflict because we haven’t tested anything like that. But, like, the application timing would be the same. So you’d be out there putting out your codling moth dispensers at the same time. You’re just putting them up in the same tree and at the same timing.

Monique Rivera: Yeah. And we’re kind of in that window right now here in upstate New York. Definitely timely to be thinking about. So, what has overall been Michigan’s – are you guys seeing a resurgence of San Jose scale? I think there’s been a little bit of buzz about that, but there has been more in New York state of this dormant oil, plus Esteem for control of them. So, what’s going on in Michigan with San Jose scale?

Julianna Wilson: Yeah, so I definitely think there has been increase of complaints about San Jose scale. Partly it’s because of changes in available materials that growers can use. And so things that we have now require a little bit more precision in terms of timing. So Esteem, for instance, is really effective. Like, we’ve had really good success with that here in Michigan as well. And even just on its own, a little bit as a pink spray, not with oil. That’s been a good timing. And other insect growth regulators, we’ve looked at Centaur as well, and that will suppress our crawlers, which is really the stage that we’re trying to target at that timing. It takes a little bit more precision in terms of timing a spray, as opposed to something like chlorpyrifos as a pink spray. Esteem works really well when we nail it in terms of crawler emergence.

Monique Rivera: Exactly how managing every single pest is going. The more narrow spectrum the product, the more the timing matters. Are you guys in Michigan seeing the same resurgence of woolly apple aphid?

Julianna Wilson: Yes, woolly apple aphids, that is like, the number one complaint that I’m hearing from growers. They’re a lot easier to see, too, than San Jose scale. Probably more people have San Jose scale than they really realize because they’re so cryptic, like, hard to see in the orchard. But, yeah, woolies are very abundant here, and we’re starting a new project this season just looking at what’s happening with their biology. We know we, for instance, found that they are overwintering above ground in Michigan. We have evidence of that over this past winter, and it was a mild winter. So maybe the preponderance of, you know, more mild winters is exacerbating the problem with these. But we’re definitely seeing an increase in woolies. And so there’s a lot of questions about, like, what do we use, how do we time control for that? We’ve got some efficacy studies that we’re working on along those lines, and also just trying to get back to its basic biology. It’s an old pest, but similar to San Jose scale, they’re both old pests, we haven’t really had to think about them because we had very broad spectrum materials that we could just apply and then not think about it. But now with the things that require more precision and are more targeted, we have to be better about getting them on at the right time.

Monique Rivera: Yeah, I think we were pretty familiar with the timing when the timing was at petal fall. I think that’s burning right now because I was finding them the last week of March. Active colonies, the last week of March, which was just shocking, but figuring out the timing for basically this stage where they’re already feeding and we’ve already have wool on them here.

Julianna Wilson: Oh, wow. Yeah.

Monique Rivera: In the aerial colonies. So, this is just beyond our current recommendations or understanding of how to deal with this pest. So, I do have some colleagues at Reality Research who are doing some preliminary testing on that. But so far, all the buzz in New York has been about Sefina. But we got that a lot later than you guys probably did. It just came on the market for us last summer.

Julianna Wilson: I haven’t heard of that material.

Monique Rivera: Oh, that is a BASF product. So that’s like. I definitely think that’s worth trying out. And I’m sure this afternoon at the pink meeting, I’m going to get a ton of questions about this.

Julianna Wilson: Yeah, we’ve been looking at Movento, which requires some planning. It takes time for it to work, but Movento is pretty good against woolies. It basically takes time for it to take effect so it can look like nothing is happening, but then it, a week or so later is when you’re going to start seeing the impact, you know, unlike something like Diazinon or something that people throw on there as like a Hail Mary, middle of the season type product. We are also curious to know more about how Beleaf works and whether that might be a strong material. With some planning, you know, it doesn’t work like, rapidly. These newer materials, they either take time because they have to get something going inside the plant to become active and, like, work, or they don’t persist long enough. You know, there’s like, so many reasons why they’re trickier to use some of these products. I don’t know anything about Sefina, so I’m going to look into that.

Monique Rivera: Yeah, I could also share our data from last year with you. Be more than happy to, but yeah, this is great. I’m excited about San Jose scale mating disruption. If we can get that, I think for the people that it affects – I think my impression of this in New York is that where it’s a problem, it’s a problem, but where it’s not, it’s just kind of not. It’s being controlled, probably by something else in the program. But still, I think the more we can move towards these tools and having production not depend on spraying, because, as you know, the regulatory environment’s getting tough. So, I’m really excited about this, and I am really looking forward to whatever you guys end up publishing. And we could share that with this audience, too. If you have something out already, you can put it in the show notes. So, thanks so much for sharing with us today.

Julianna Wilson: Thanks for inviting me.

 

Pathology Updates with Dr. Kerik Cox

All right, it’s 4/21. Nice, dreary overcast Sunday. That’s not supposed to get any rain, but it’s getting plenty of rain just coming off and on constantly overcast, cold, and sprinkly. Great weather for apple scab. And with that in mind, let’s talk a little bit about apple scab forecasts for the week.

Let’s move into Long Island. Presently it’s predicting a green tip date of 3/7, which probably is not necessarily the case. And for most of my predictions, I’m going to move it back about two weeks because I think these things accumulated a lot of warm degree days early on, in January and February, that the trees really couldn’t use as effectively. And they’re a little bit not as advanced as the regional extension specialists tell me. So I’m going to move it up to about ten days, maybe to the 18th. Looks like Long Island’s coming off of a pretty hefty, probably, I’m guessing around 53% maturity. Bear in mind there is a plus and minus 24%-to-40% error on that curve, but I like to put it back a little bit ahead. This particular instance, the green tip, moving that up to about 3/18 just so that we don’t end the simulation too early and get probably the better, a better accurate representation of the maturity. So about 50%. They’re coming off of a pretty hefty discharge, approaching about 29% and are looking forward into a week of really cold and not so much rain. If we look down, no ejections are predicted. Cumulative discharges about 60%. No infection events are predicted. Doesn’t even look like they’re getting that rain that everyone else is getting around the 24th or rain or what we might call snain – snow and rain mixed. So it looks like a pretty easy week for Long island. You have a lot of days to sort of move through, get your next cover on, take your time. You know, if you want to go back right after the previous one for a little bit of reach back, that’s fine. But you might want to wait a little bit into the week and see how the warmer weather on the weekend of next weekend’s up folding out. Fire blight – it’s predicting in Riverhead, Long Island, first blossom, open day to 4/11 and maybe more advanced, and you could totally move this up, but this won’t matter as much. You’ll do want to move that first blossom date forward a little bit into the future to prevent the model simulation from ending early, it doesn’t seem to have as great of an impact on the outputs. And if you look this week with the really cold weather, you got your daily TRVs right around one. And this is on a scale of something that can get as high as 1200 for the Cougar blight TRV values, the EIPs are sitting at zero, or pretty much zero for the week in Long Island. Now that I look at it, you might see some moderate risk weather, even with the zero EIP. And this is because the average daily temperature has gone above 50° on those days. So it’s no cause for alarm, even though it will predict it as a moderate risk. Very low, very easy.

Let’s creep on up into the Hudson Valley and they are coming off of a fairly lighter discharge event into the end of last week. And we’ll move their green tip date up a little bit as well. I’m going to move it up to the 21^st of March, by the way, just to make things a little more normal. Probably approaching the 50% part, about halfway through the Apple scab season. Unfortunately, they are looking at a really massive ejection event. 29% discharge on the 24th as well, and fewer days to sort of get this application on. I think I’d probably begin today [Sunday April 21 2024] or Monday and then start spraying to make sure I’ve got some good coverage. You want something thick and sticky that can provide good protection during the big event on the 29th. Put out some mancozeb plus one of the single site materials, might be a good opportunity this week to really hit them with something a little bit fancy down there. If you’re seeing that 29% ejection, what does it look like? It’s not a lot of rain. It’s predicted at this point, about quarter of an inch. Temperatures are in a reasonable level for apple scab, it’s still going to be a little bit cold. It’s really predicting only about 12 hours of leaf wetness, but a lot of that leaf wetness is occurring during the day, and that’s why the ejection is so high. Fire blight – It’s unlikely that they’re deep into the heart of bloom, it is predicting a bloom date on 4/18 [April 18, 2024]. And even if you were to make it a bloom of today [April 21, 2024], it’s still going to be very similar to Long island – cold, perfect weather for avoiding fire blight. You might only have one day where it’s really hitting into that moderate risk of still zero EIP, but only because of an average daily temperature of 50. It’s terrible – Fire blight likes to grow at 75°, so that might put things in perspective. And you’ll be understanding now why your TRV is so low and your EIP is so low for the week. Fairly easy times.

Moving up into the Capital District. Let’s go check out Voorheesville. It looks a little bit easier for Voorheesville predicting much later. Green tip maybe at best 20% maturity whatsoever. And that’s even with a 4/8 day of green tip. If you know green tip came later, you could move that on into the future and see a slight ejection. Only 7% doesn’t even code an infection period anymore at 12 hours because the average temperature predicted is about 47°. So, it looks like as the weather predictions are coming into the future, a little different than what I showed on the video version of this, things are dialing back as there could even be some snain in the Voorheesville, the Capital District as well. Not even predicting an infection. I think you’ve got some excellent opportunities to look into that and get some just a nice coverage on of some materials. Maybe this is your chance to try out some biologicals.

Moving up into Peru. Very much the same situation, an easy week, really low maturity 5%. Just little blips and blops there of ejection, which are predicting a little bit of an infection event. It’s going to be kind of cold, it’s low maturity. I would call this a low risk. I wouldn’t use anything too fancy. I would just go through and make sure things are covered. Looks like about at this point, still cold on the 24th when this will happen. But a lot of wet weather during the day. So, a good opportunity just I think to rely on some protectants in there for this period and save your heavy hitters and single-sites for later in the season when you’ve got multiple diseases that need them. Fire blight in both of these regions shouldn’t really be a problem yet. And it’s going to be the same scenario, even if you had bloom, it’s just going to be too cold and wet for fire blight whatsoever. Not a chance with these temperatures this week, so safe, you can wait and save your materials for bloom next week.

Look at the Finger Lakes region here. Coming off a big injection event about 17% or so on April 18. And we’ll probably move even the green tip date a little bit ahead as well. Approaching the 50% halfway point through the apple scab season. And in this case, and not any ejection, just a little blip at 6% because it is very low leaf wetness, mainly because it could be cold, could be a little snowy, and there’s just not a lot of it. It will occur during the day around the 23rd and 24th and the temperature is about 50°F. It’s not too bad, it’s not a big ejection event. Take these first few days to get some coverage on before you go into the infection period. And I just think protectants will be able to do the job. And even if you’re an organic farmer, I think you’ll have excellent success with the products that are available in the Finger Lakes region.

Moving up into the middle of the state, sort of towards Western New York near Sodus, along the lake. And remember, always check different sites because if you’re not on the lake it could be a little bit different and it may radically be different or maybe just slightly. Once again, this one is predicting right along the lake in the Sodus area, more of 11% ejection. Going to move that green tip date up ahead a little bit as well. Still approaching the 50% maturity mark, not quite there. Things are a little bit behind in Western New York, especially that far north. Basically a 10% ascospore ejection. Nothing to panic, but I would go through and make sure I’ve got my protectants on before the 23rd when it’s predicting about 20 to 4. 4 on the 23rd, 20 hours of leaf wetness on the 24th with a lot during the day. Moderate ejection about 10%. But nothing to be concerned about. The good news is with this cold wet weather, you don’t have to worry about fire blight.

Let’s move up into Niagara near the top of the state along the lake. Very similar situation to the Sodus Lake region as well. In this case they’re looking more at an almost 21% ejection. When you combine the days of both the 23rd and the 24th, it’s still going to be cold. Apple scab will kind of like this weather. In this case you might want to include one of the protectants. Maybe you should include an Inspire Super or something or I think you would be fine just going with a little bit of Captan/Mancozeb or a very high rate by bio-pesticide product of your choice, if you’re in the organic realm, I think I would just protect this one out given the sort of cold weather, even if it is a pretty big one, and I think if you got good coverage on going on into the 23rd, you’ll be fine. A little more rain is predicted between the two days, looking almost a half an inch of rain, enough to wash anything off that was remaining last week’s infection period around April 18. But if you get good coverage of captan that redistributes and mancozeb that sticks, I think you’ll be fine. And you probably can just save those single sites for later. Hopefully no one’s having too much bloom at this point. We’re moving into the pink period in western New York. At this point, I don’t think we need to worry about fire blight with this cold, wet weather. All right, that’s all for the scaffold’s disease update.

All right, let’s do a little bit of extra bonus this week on fire blight. I’m going to start my series of managing fire blight in 2024 just going to get sort of an overview of the previous season, 2023. It was pretty light, very few outbreaks, all time low number of samples were submitted for streptomycin-resistance testing, as disease was generally fairly easy to manage throughout the state. It was generally a cool, low risk early bloom started around mid-April to early May depending on where you were in the state. But in this case, while it started, you know, earlier in mid-April, it seemed to linger for quite some time because we had a lot of cold weather and sort of moved into almost back to where we’d normally be in mid-May before it ended, when we finally got a big burst of warm weather. Fortunately, what ended up happening is we had just a little tiny blip that allowed petal fall to start happening, and we had a really nice, cool petal fall, which I thought was pretty nice. In that case, the end of May was a long past bloom for everybody, and that’s when we finally got that stormy, hot, high risk weather. But at this time, I think a lot of the early season fire blight infections were well managed, and then there wasn’t a lot of inoculum for shoot blight epidemics in the summer. Yep, a few people had some issues, but it wasn’t a really bad year. In past years, we usually got this really heavy, hot, rainy weather right at the end of petal fall, right into the thinning period. And when this happened, we had some problems that were occurring – tissues were being killed by the thinners, and the weather was hot and wet, just giving fire blight a foothold, and that was more of the 2022 season. If we start to see something like this again, we’re going to have really hot, wet weather at the end of petal fall, we’ve got to make sure that we’re ready to really put on our most effective options right at the end of the bloom and into that petal fall period. As long as there’s some flowers out there, it’s still not 100% petal fall.

All right, so what’s the present season look like? It’s a very cold spring, say cool, it’s cool and wet. Great for apple scab. Not a big problem for fire blight. And if these trends continue, we could have another really easy light fire blight season, particularly on Long Island, the Hudson Valley, which should be at bloom or at the cusp of bloom in the next few days or the coming weeks. They might skate through with a fairly cool bloom and low fire blight pressure. And looking at the long-term forecast, it does look like things might be an easy season for the east. The eastern part of New York had a couple of cold days over the weekend and into the next week. This is 4/21 [April 21, 2024] and there’s a couple maybe low 70’s predicted during the weekend, probably next Sunday [April 28, 2024] or so. And even at that point, Western New York probably won’t even really be in the hard king bloom at that point. But if you’re concerned about a lot of carryover inoculum or you had problems last year, or you want to start early on getting those plants ramped up with the defences on the inside, usually we don’t have a lot of problems with blossom blight. It’s the inside of the plant where things get really exciting, and the damage and devastation really occur. In this case, some of the better programs are either that early tight cluster.pink application for prohexadion calcium, Kudos or Apogee, with or without a little bit of Acibenzolar-S-methyl (Actigard) right at that tight cluster/pink. And this will sort of slow the migration of bacteria through the tissues. Even if they occur later on, you want to get them ready now, and it will also help ramp up the defenses. The current line of thinking is if you have a highly vigorous tree, go 6oz per hundred at tight cluster or pink, and that’ll really help with your blossom blight. Or if you want to sort of give it the one two punch, give it that 2oz of prohexadione calcium per hundred with a 1oz per hundred of the Actigard right there at that pink, and then we’ll talk about doing it again later as we move into petal fall. That’s it for the extra little bonus. We’ll talk more about managing fire blight next week.

 

State of the State with Dr. Anna Wallis

Anna Wallis: And now for the state of the state, your weekly roundup of phenology and degree day accumulations from major fruit production regions of the state. I’m Anna Wallis from the New York State IPM program, and the information I’ll be sharing has been aggregated from regional specialists, including Mike Basedow, Janet van Zoeren, Mario Miranda Sazo, Craig Kahlke, and Dan Donahue. It also includes my own observations and information collected from NEWA. In general, it’s been somewhat of a quiet week. We’ve had a return to pretty cool conditions, so tree phenology development has been a little bit slow, and we expect this to continue for most of this week. Across the state, we’re ranging from a little bit earlier in terms of degree days, to a lot further along than averages, depending where you are in the state, it’s been pretty regionally specific. We have some cold nights in the forecast for this week, particularly on Thursday morning [April 26, 2024]. We have forecasts in the upper twenties in many places across the state, so there’s a potential for some frosty conditions. Still, calm nights are the most susceptible to inversion conditions in which cold air sinks and hot air rises, making the lower limbs and blossoms in that zone at highest risk of frost. Cornell Cooperative Extension Regional teams hosted a webinar on frost mitigation strategies on April 12 last Friday, and in case you missed it, that recording is now available online (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIBEpfb98ws). A great amount of information was shared on forecasting frosts, risk of frost, and mitigation methods, so I encourage you to go watch that webinar. We’ll post that in the show notes. After the cool weather predicted this week, we’re expecting a warming trend at the end of the weekend into next week, so things will suddenly wake up and progress pretty quickly – in some areas of the state, we expect early bloom.

Phenology across the state, now, in the Hudson Valley, apples are an advanced tight cluster or even early pink in most varieties at the Hudson Valley Research lab. In the southern part of the valley, Pink Lady and other early varieties had a few open blossoms on Monday, and with another warm day like we have forecasted for Sunday, we’re expecting to see more bloom. Pears are at first bloom and stone fruit, peaches and cherries and plums are at full bloom, or even past that. In terms of degree day accumulations, we’re only slightly ahead of averages at this time. The average bloom date over the past 40 years has been May 2, with the earliest on April 16, both in 2022 and in 2012, and the latest on May 16 in 1984. Degree day accumulations are just about exactly average, possibly dipping below averages for the 15- and 30-year averages. But with the warming trend, we expect that to jump back up at the beginning of next week. Staying close to average we had our first OFM, or oriental fruit moth captures at Highland at the research lab last week, and with continued catch this week, we have sustained trap capture, meaning that our biofix for OFM was set last week.

In Western New York, and Lake Ontario region, in contrast, is considerably ahead of averages both in Geneva and closer to the lake, although there’s some variation from site to site. Early pink and advanced tight cluster is what we’re seeing in most places across the region.

In the Capital Region, McIntosh is about a tight cluster. Peaches are at pink and starting bloom, and this region is slightly behind average degree day accumulations in the Clifton Park area.

In the Champlain Valley, early varieties and McIntosh are at about half inch green, with other varieties ranging from quarter inch to half inch green. Degree day accumulation is just slightly ahead of average in this area.

And now for some upcoming pest events. Early season insects continue to be active despite the somewhat cool weather. We saw some tarnished plant bug active in clusters early last week, and we continue to see some activity there. Also, oblique banded leaf roller overwintering larvae are active in a few places in warmer sites, so you can be inspecting clusters and terminals for those. We’re also seeing aphids, particularly green aphids, in the clusters, and you can also be looking for rosy apple aphid, which should be active soon. We’re also continuing to get reports of woolly apple aphid, both in the Western New York region and in the Hudson Valley. These insects are active just above the ground, and you were seeing wool covering them at this time, typically protected by some bark tissue. We’re also continuing to get reports of scale, San Jose scale and other scale throughout the northeast region this year. In terms of the lepidopteran complex, we had our first oriental fruit moth capture last week at the Hudson Valley lab and continued trap capture this week. So we set our biofix for last week. We also have OFM first trap captures at a couple of early sites, both in Peru, in the North country, and in Western New York, so we’re continuing to watch that. And we had our first trap capture for codling moth in Geneva on April 20 – this is a lot earlier than usual, so we’re going to continue paying attention to that. Usually, we’d recommend setting out traps around bloom, but you might want to consider putting them out early this year with the early warm temperatures.

In terms of diseases, we’re still looking for our first signs of the early scab infections this year. We should be able to see them soon as fuzzy olive green lesions on leaves on trees that were unprotected. As we get some warm days coming up at the end of the weekend, you can start to be scouting for ooze in places where you had fire blight last year and start thinking about bloom and protecting your open flowers for fire blight. If temperatures get warm, you can also be looking for powdery mildew on open buds with sort of twisted or distorted tissue.

Thanks to everyone that attended our virtual IPM scout training that was held on Monday, April 15, we broadcasted live from three orchards throughout the state in different production regions and shared some of our best practices for scouting and monitoring, and how to monitor for a few key insect pests early in the season. In case you missed it, you can view the recording online. We’ll put that recording link in the show notes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtyOWCL1Q2A&t=3359s)

And now here are the current degree day accumulations for major fruit producing regions of the state. This is based on previous work done by Art Agnello relating to McIntosh phonology and degree days. We’re sharing degree day base 43 Fahrenheit at this time. As a point of reference, tight cluster is usually around 228, pink 289 and full bloom 378, and that’s degree day base 43. In Geneva, we’re at tight cluster with 264; In Highland at the Hudson Valley Lab, we’re at Pink with 324. At Clifton Park we’re at approximately tight cluster with 224; In Peru, about a half inch green with 172. Medina, an inland site in the Lake Ontario region, at Pink with 292. Appleton North, a lake site, is at pink with 242. Fairville, the apple shed is an inland site, with pink and 272, and Williamson DeMarree, a lake site, at Pink with 272.

 

McIntosh Phenology and DDs (43F BE) (avg +/- std)
Phenological Stage	DD Accumulation
Silver tip	58-106
Green tip	99-144
Half-Inch Green	150-201
Tight Cluster	206-257
Pink	267-316
Bloom	344-415
Petal Fall	439-523

 

Phenology & DDs for NY NEWA Stations from 1/1 – 4/22
Station	DD Accumulation	Stage
Geneva	264	Tight Cluster
Highland (HVRL)	324	Pink
Clifton Park	224	Tight Cluster
Peru (Forrence)	172	1/2” Green
Medina – Inland	292	Pink
Appleton North – Lakeside	242	Pink
Fairville (The Apple Shed) – Inland	272	Pink
Williamson (DeMarree) – Lakeside	272	Pink

 

Before I go, I want to share a quick note about NEWA and the outage that we had last week. I talked to Dan Olmstead, who manages NEWA, and he shared this information. No data were lost and nothing was compromised. It actually had nothing to do with NEWA, our vendors, or any of the weather stations. The National Weather Service had a nationwide forecast data outage, and it was due to a cascade of hardware failures at their data center in Maryland. And so forecast data that are normally combined with weather station historical data were unavailable. This would have potentially affected any organization, business, public or private nationally, who use NWS weather forecast data. So, rest assured, no NEWA data was lost. Thanks for listening and good luck until next week.

Monique Rivera: That concludes this week’s update. Thanks for listening.