RIDGE QUEST INC. — Department of Agriculture SBIR Phase I: 8.2

Description

Many factors acting together including concerns aboutworker safety food safety pesticide resistance and new regulations governing pesticides haveheightened grower awareness to reduce insecticide inputs and increase reliance on biopesticides.Foremost among the forces leading to change is the need to reduce input costs in order tomaintain economic viability. Mating disruption is among the most effective biopesticides formanaging various fruit crop pests including Oriental fruit moth. Although this tactic has provento be a viable alternative to insecticides for some key pests it is yet to be embraced as aneconomically viable alternative to insecticides in many fruit production regions. A majorimpediment to widespread adoption of disruption technologies are the number of devices neededtiming physical application of the product and the high product and application costs.OBJECTIVES:The major aim in developing the Tangler technology is to greatly improve themating disruption application process and substantially reduce its cost especially the applicationcost thereby increasing adoption.The Tangler system consists of a module loaded with pheromone and a launcher thatenables the grower to rapidly apply numerous modules to the upper tree canopy. The moduleconsists of a cap and a base each made of biodegradable plastic. The cap is attached to the baseby a cotton string. During manufacturing the string and release vessel are fused to the cap.Thestring is inserted into the base to allow the cap and base to be assembled.One hundred Tanglercapsules are coiled into 100 Tanglers and placed in a box clip. This clip is inserted into thelauncher operated by compressed gas.As a result of the bola design the propelled modulesreadily become tangled in the tree branches. It took a single applicator 30 minutes to treat a 1 haorchard with 1000. Currently registered hand-applied disruption formulations require 3-4 hoursto treat a 1 ha orchard at this high rate.The greatly improved efficiency provided by TanglerOFM will mean that growers no longer will need to skimp on the number of dispensers appliedbecause it is time consuming and labor intensive. Moreover their dependence on labor to usemating disruption and the expense associated with the application will be substantially reduced.APPROACH:First this research project will determine the efficacy of the Tangler OFM forseason long control and the long term reduction of populations. Secondly compare TanglerOFM to the commercially available competitor NoMate OFM (Scentry Inc).Thirdly clarify theoptimal rate of Tangler OFM required to achieve mating disruption long term populationreduction and prevention of crop damage.Lastly optimize Tangler OFM's membrane toachieve the release of all active ingredients for the duration of the OFM flight with emphasis onproviding superior mating disruption.COMMERCIALIZATION:The goal of this research will be to develop a highly efficient andeffective mating disruption product for OFM that will prevent damage caused by this pest andincrease grower adoption of this technology in organic and commercial fruit crops.Furtherdevelopment of this product will lead to a dual or triple dispenser which will include Codlingmoth and/or Oblique banded leafroller.