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  • From: Debby Williams <williamsdeb@sbcglobal.net>
  • To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] [ARTICLE] Hogs Help Battle Beetles in Apple Orchard
  • Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2008 22:45:55 -0800 (PST)

There are more detailed articles in the Upper Midwest Organic Tree Fruit Growers Network Newsletters - Oct 2007 and Jan 2008.  Very interesting reading.
 
http://www.mosesorganic.org/treefruit/newsletters.htm#issues
 
Debby

Douglas Woodard <dwoodard@becon.org> wrote:
For your information.

Doug Woodard
St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada


Hogs Help Battle Beetles in Apple Orchard



By JAMES PRICHARD, AP

Posted: 2008-03-05 12:27:29

Filed Under: Science News

CLAYTON TOWNSHIP, Mich. (March 5) - Jim Koan has gone hog-wild in his
battle against a beetle that threatens his 120-acre organic apple orchard.

As part of a research experiment believed to be among the first of its
kind, Koan is using pigs to help protect his fruit from the plum
curculio, a tiny insect that is among the most destructive apple pests.

More than two dozen porkers patrol his orchard, gobbling down fallen,
immature apples containing the beetle's larvae. After a successful trial
run late last spring, he and some researchers at Michigan State
University are preparing for year two of the experiment at AlMar
Orchards and Cidery in eastern Michigan.

They hope their work will someday help fruit growers throughout the
world reduce the use of pesticides while diversifying their agricultural
operations, as he is doing. He plans to periodically sell off the
offspring of his four original hogs, keeping only those he needs.

"I'm not ready to say that everybody should run out and do this but I'll
tell you, after the first year, I'm a whole lot more optimistic and
excited by the possibilities," said Dave Epstein, a tree fruit
pest-management specialist at the university and the project's lead
researcher.

The quarter-inch-long plum curculio is particularly difficult for
growers like Koan to control because no good organic controls have been
developed for them. The beetle can be controlled conventionally, often
with the pesticide azinphos-methyl. But the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency is phasing out the powerful pesticide, marketed under
the trade name Guthion, because of the risks it poses to farm workers
and to the environment.

Adult female curculios cut crescent-shaped flaps in the skin of newly
formed apples and lay their eggs inside, where they hatch. The beetle
larvae burrow into the center of the young fruit, making it drop
prematurely in late June or early July.

After spending about two weeks inside, the larvae migrate from the
fallen fruit into the soil, where they pupate for 10 to 12 days before
emerging as adults to attack the remaining fruit and start the cycle all
over again.

Koan decided to try to find an animal that would eat the fallen apples
as they lay beneath the trees, before the bugs became adults, but he had
a few misses before he settled on pigs.

First, he tried using some chickens.

"All they did all summer long was lay around under the trees when it was
hot and just sunbathe, you know, kind of like on the beach," he said.

Then a neighbor's dogs got to the birds. "So that was a bad idea."

He next tried guinea fowl, an energetic wild chicken. They did a
"fantastic job" - until some birds of prey discovered them at the orchard.

Then Koan remembered how his grandfather would drive his pigs into his
orchard so they could feed on fallen apples.

So Koan obtained some Berkshire pigs, with the idea of breeding them not
only so they would eat the fallen apples and kill the beetle larvae but
also for slaughter as organically raised meat. He bought a boar and
three sows, and now has 27 pigs.

When the infested apples fell in June, the pigs were released into three
one-acre sections of the orchard. The researchers compared those three
plots with three other one-acre plots where the swine didn't go, and
found that the pigs did even better than expected.

Left in the orchard for three days, the pigs gobbled down 98 percent of
the fallen apples. Tests showed virtually all the larvae were digested.

"The little guys moved through like a pack of Hoover vacuums," Epstein said.

The researchers found that in the plots where no pigs were allowed, five
times as many plum curculios were counted.

Epstein got a one-year grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to
study the effect of the pigs on the orchard last year and has applied
for a four-year grant.

Koan, 60, took over the farm in Clayton Township, near Flint, from his
parents. In the past 15 years or so, while trying to diversify his
business, he has moved into organic production, phasing out most
chemicals to fight off the pests, weeds and diseases that could harm his
fruit.

"I think if my granddad was alive today and he saw how excited I am
about doing this and this information that we're gaining on this," said
Koan, "he would just look at me and say, 'Jeez, you're stupid. You
didn't know that?"'

On the Net:

AlMar Orchards and Cidery: http://www.almarorchards.com/

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