Goal: Leverage new opportunities for biologicals into the turfscape

Main Activities:

• Screen a variety of biologicals with potential synergists
  

  Damage due to severe European chafer infestation on a golf course practice range, Queensbury, NY (Photo A. Morales, NYSAES)
  
  
• Measure variation across white grub species
  
• Advance from lab to pot to small- and large-scale field trials

Funding: NE IPM, Federal Formula Funds

This line of research and extension is in response to a growing demand for reduced-risk pest management strategies. This demand is based on factors such as new imidacloprid restrictions in New York State, local municipality restrictions, neighborhood notification laws, and “greening” of the consumer population. Overall, feedback from society and the environment indicates that we are relying too much on chemical insecticides. Moreover, current white grub control scenarios fall short of best IPM. Not only is there widespread reliance on early season preventive applications of imidacloprid, there is a lack of biologically-based control alternatives. In practical terms this means that turfgrass managers have no quantitative way to decide when not to spray; and those seeking non-chemical options are stymied by biological alternatives that are relatively difficult or expensive to apply, or yield such inconsistent results that they are impracticable. 

Root-feeding white grubs, Japanese beetle (left), European chafer and Phyllophaga sp. (right) (Photo D. Cappaert, www.ipmimages.org)

Part of the solution is curative alternatives that would permit sampling and better decision-making, and biological alternatives that could supplant reliance on chemical insecticides. Among white grubs and other soil-borne insect pests, there is broadening evidence that synergistic interactions between chemical and biological insecticides hold promise for new management opportunities. For instance, the susceptibility of white grubs to entomopathogenic nematodes can be enhanced by other stressors such as endophyte infection of the host plant, Bt, milky spore disease and imidacloprid. This approach, however, has not been undertaken in a comprehensive fashion for any turfgrass pest, nor been adapted to or evaluated under field conditions. 

Our goal is to leverage biologicals into the turfscape by exploiting chemical/biological synergisms. Our main approach is to systematically investigate the interactions between combined tactics, such as reduced rates of pesticides in tandem with biologicals. The objective of our current studies is to identify synergistic combinations of control products, which, through a series of laboratory, greenhouse and field trials, will lead to curative and reduced-pesticide control alternatives that can be implemented and adopted by stakeholders to improve IPM in turfgrass. While the majority of these activities focus on the European chafer, we are also interested in measuring variation across other major white grub species in the Northeast, including the Asiatic garden beetle, Japanese beetle and oriental beetle.

Related Presentions:

Peck, D.C. 2007. Biological control of soil insect pests. 39th Annual Professional Turf and Landscape Conference and Trade Show, NYS Turf and Landscape Association, White Plains, NY. 01/10/07.