CDFA has announced a grant to the Coalition for Urban/Rural Environmental Stewardship (CURES), which will be used to support a new pest management approach.
The $490,000 grant will go toward a project spanning over three years “promoting and incentivizing the use of pheromone mating disruption, a biological-based pest management approach, near impaired waterways in the eastern San Joaquin Valley,” CDFA said in a release.
The project comes as the navel orangeworm (NOW) becomes a major insect pest in almond, pistachio and walnut orchards. According to the release, the NOW is, “often controlled using conventional insecticides, including pyrethroids.”
“We have a responsibility to balance our mission to protect the state’s food supply from pests like the navel orangeworm with the imperative to use the most sustainable methods available,” CDFA Secretary Karen Ross said.
Pheromone mating disruption is a sustainable pest management (SPM) practice. It works to disrupt “NOW reproduction by preventing males from locating females in orchards.” Mating disruption has been proven to work both in commercial use and by university research.
The approach of “area-wide mating disruption” is being used in the CURES project. This specific method utilizes collaboration by growers with connecting land to make sure the project is seen in a larger area.
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“CURES works with the Eastern San Joaquin Water Quality Coalition and its outreach program managers to contact growers along impaired waterways,” CURES Executive Director Parry Klassen said. “We’re offering financial incentives and technical assistance for using the NOW mating disruption simultaneously in their contiguous orchards. The larger the area covered along a waterway, the more effective the approach for reducing NOW populations and the damage they cause.”
The project relies on the partnership of multiple resources such as the Almond Board of California (ABC), the University of California Cooperative Extension and various crop consultants collaborating with growers.
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