New attractants for monitoring, MD, and mass trapping of codling moth
Author: Alan Knight, Michele Preti, Esteban Basoalto, Valentina Mujica
Published: 2021
Summary: The serendipitous development of the 4K lure for codling moth occurred through a collaborative synthesis of world-wide expertise. Its discovery gives us the ability to monitor codling moth without the use of sex pheromones and thus avoid any disruption of traps in orchards treated with variable levels of mating disruption technologies. The 4K lure provides us the ability to seasonally track female codling moths and improve predictive timing models for key phenological events. The attractiveness of the 4K lure allows traps to be placed at a more user-friendly height in the canopy and the lure is effective for at least 8 weeks. Ongoing studies have identified other host plant volatiles that can be used to create additional effective blends. The addition of UV light to traps baited with the 4K lure creates new opportunities to catch more moths, thus improving our ability to monitor and remove female moths from our orchards. The power of this dual modality can also be used for monitoring and female removal of other tortricid pests, such as oriental fruit moth, eye-spotted bud moth, and leafrollers. Development of optimized non-saturating trap-lure combinations allows us to use the power of the 4K lure to remove substantial numbers of both virgin and mated resident and immigrant female codling moths from our orchards before they lay eggs. Studies conducted over the past two years in apple and pear have consistently shown that female removal strategies can be effective in reducing levels of fruit injury by > 50%. Female removal should be used with mating disruption to increase the removal of unmated females. This MD-FR approach when used for orchards’ borders and surrounding bin piles can serve as a key bulwark to protect the orchard from immigrant moths. Future studies building upon these initial findings will strive to increase this impact. Much has been accomplished and more fine tuning is needed by growers and farm managers to deploy and integrate this useful tactic into their programs.
