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  • From: "Lon J. Rombough" <lonrom@hevanet.com>
  • To: NAFEX <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [NAFEX] FW: Wasps Help Protect Apples
  • Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 06:09:56 -0700



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From: ARS News Service <NewsService@ars.usda.gov>
Reply-To: ARS News Service <NewsService@ars.usda.gov>
Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 06:18:37 -0400
To: ARS News subscriber <lonrom@hevanet.com>
Subject: Wasps Help Protect Apples

STORY LEAD:
Hard-Working Wasps Help Protect Apple Crops
___________________________________________

ARS News Service
Agricultural Research Service, USDA
Alfredo Flores, (301) 504-1627, aflores@ars.usda.gov
May 12, 2003
___________________________________________

American apple growers in the Northeast can thank a European import for
helping them battle the tarnished plant bug, one of the fiercest crop
pests in North America. Agricultural Research Service entomologist
William H. Day, with the agency's Beneficial Insects Introduction
Research Laboratory in Newark, Del., began releasing the parasitic wasp,
Peristenus digoneutis, as a biological control for the pest in the late
1970s and early 1980s.

The tarnished plant bug, Lygus lineolaris, is a pest of fruits,
vegetables, cotton, crops grown for seed and tree seedlings. It is
especially damaging to apples, strawberries and other fruits. Adult
tarnished plant bugs puncture the immature fruit to feed on its juices.
As the fruit grows, it becomes deformed at the bug's feeding sites. Many
apples end up so blemished or misshapen that they can't be sold, or can
only be sold at a low price--for cider making, for example.

Tarnished plant bugs often live in alfalfa fields, where they feed and
multiply even though they don't attack alfalfa itself. Then, when the
alfalfa is cut for hay, large numbers of them fly away and live on other
crops.

To counter the tarnish plant bugs in alfalfa, Day established P.
digoneutis in northern New Jersey alfalfa fields in 1984. Since then,
Day has been monitoring three tarnished plant bug-infested alfalfa
fields in northwestern New Jersey. During the past decade, Day has found
that the beneficial wasps reduced the plant bugs' numbers by 65 percent
in these fields. The parasitic wasp has spread from New Jersey into
seven other northeastern states, and into Canada. After the wasp arrived
in New Hampshire, tarnish plant bug damage to apples in that state
dropped by 63 percent.

The tiny P. digoneutis wasp is harmless to humans, but its females
sting young plant bug nymphs and lay tiny eggs in them. About 10 days
after the wasp eggs hatch into larvae, the nymphs die. Recent research
has shown that half the tarnished plant bugs in strawberries are killed
by the parasite, and additional research is under way to learn if fruit
damage is reduced.

More information about this research is in the May issue of
Agricultural Research magazine, available on the World Wide Web at:
http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/may03/wasp0503.htm

ARS is the U.S. Department of Agriculture's chief scientific research
agency.
___________________________________________

* This is one of the news reports that ARS Information distributes to
subscribers on weekdays.
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* NewsService@ars.usda.gov | www.ars.usda.gov/is
* Phone (301) 504-1638 | fax (301) 504-1648






  • [NAFEX] FW: Wasps Help Protect Apples, Lon J. Rombough, 05/12/2003

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