Sacramento Valley Almond Pest Management Alliance

Winter Status Report

January 24, 2000

This is the second season for the Sacramento Valley Almond Pest Management Alliance demonstration orchard. The orchard will have the exact same blocks used last season which consists of, a 27 acre Grower Standard treatment, a 12.5 acre "soft" chemical treatment, a 10 acre treatment which will receive an organophosphate dormant spray. This 10 acre treatment will be further divided into two blocks. Five acres will receive the organophosphate dormant spray and the remaining five acres will receive the organophosphate dormant spray and an organophosphate hullsplit spray.

Following the protocol from last year, 10 dormant spurs were taken from 10 randomly selected trees in each treatment. Spurs were examined for presence of peach twig borer hibernacula, san jose scale, san jose scale parasite, and mite eggs. European fruit lecanium was also recorded but since it is not a major pest, there is no specific recommendation in the Pest Management Alliance program. The results of the dormant spur samples are shown on Table 1.

Table 1: Pests detected on dormant spur samples, number per 100 spurs.

*Sampled 12/2/99 from 10 spurs from 10 trees per treatment.

Mummy counts were taken on January 19, 2000. Twenty trees were assessed at random in each of the four treatment areas. The total number of mummies was recorded for each tree. The total for each treatment was added and divided by 20 in order to express average number of mummies per tree per treatment. It is recommended to clean to less than one mummy per tree. From this assessment, the mummies may need to be removed manually. Table 2 shows results of the mummy counts.

Table 2: Total and average number of mummies per tree per treatment.

* Mummy count results taken on January 19, 2000 on 20 trees per treatment.

An organophophate application will be applied on the 10 acres treatment before February 1, 2000.

Peach twig borer traps will be placed in each of the treatment blocks in March.