Biocontrol of Japanese Beetles
By: Vera Krischik, Associate Professor and Extension Specialist, UMN Carrie Deans, PostDoc, Department of Entomology, UMN Michael Angstman, UG UMN
Our teams is looking for cooperators to locate the JB killing fungus in MN. Our team is looking for collaborators to determine if Ovavesicula popilliae is present in adult JB at different locations around MN. Every 2 weeks from July thru September, JB traps would be set up and removed after 24 hours. Cooperators will be first to receive soil inoculations of the fungus. Please take the survey and we will call those that want to cooperate. We are cooperating with the MGCSA, MN Golf Course Superintendents Association and MNLA, MN Nursery and Landscape Association on this research. Research is funded by a MN state LCCMR to the UMN.
Japanese Beetle Collaborator Survery
Biocontrol insects released to manage Japanese Beetles
Tiphia vernalis, were imported, quarantined, raised, and then released in the 1990’s by MDA. Classical biocontrol is when pred- Unfortunately, they were not ators, parasitic wasps, and patho- effective and did not control JB gens from the ancestral home of populations. However, a native an exotic insect pest is released fungal pathogen was discovered to control the pests where it in1988 in Connecticut in the soil was introduced. Researchers killing JB. The fungal pathogen searched for natural enemies of Ovavesicula popilliae kills JB grubs Japanese beetles in Asia. Two in the soil and was found in low biocontrol agents of Japanese numbers in Minnesota so far at beetle, Winsome Fly, Isocheta two locations, in Stillwater and alldrichi, and a wasp parasitoid, the UMN Saint Paul campus. 14
