TECHNICAL
EMPOWERING GROWERS TO MANAGE THRIPS IN STRAWBERRIES Words by Emma Smith : Plant & Food Research Ltd
A tiny insect that feeds on strawberry leaves, pollen and fruit is causing a huge amount of damage. Thrips, a pest causing reduced fruit production, removal of plants and rejection of fruit, costs New Zealand strawberry growers $37,500 per hectare. Current practices to manage thrips in New Zealand are heavily reliant on insecticides. A Sustainable Future Farming project ‘Future-proofing thrips management in strawberries’ is working to address this problem by developing an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) programme for the strawberry industry. This is a collaborative project with Berryworld Ltd, Strawberry Growers New Zealand and the biological and agrichemical industries. “IPM programmes require knowledge of the whole ecosystem,” says Plant & Food Research (PFR) science team leader, Jessica Vereijssen. “You have to understand the pest organism, where they live, and their seasonality. There will not be one single management solution, but a combination of tools that together have an effect on reducing the pest population.”
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The three-year project will empower strawberry growers to adopt IPM strategies for more sustainable and profitable growing. “We want to take a proactive approach and start working on sustainable solutions for thrips management now, before we need to,” says PFR scientist and project lead, Mette Nielsen.
The aim of the first year of the project was to find what species, of the 6,000 thrip species worldwide, are present in New Zealand strawberry crops, so they can be targeted effectively “We have learnt from growers in parts of Australia who reached a point where the sprays weren’t working at all, and they were forced to change to an IPM programme almost overnight, scrambling to reform.” The aim of the first year of the project was to find what species, of the 6,000 thrip species worldwide, are present in New Zealand strawberry crops, so they can be targeted effectively.
