CONTROL OF TOMATO PINWORM AND SOUTHERN ARMYWORM ON STAKED TOMATO, 2005

Tomato pinworm is an occasional pest of tomato, eggplant and potato in Florida, producing blotch mines in leaves and damaged fruit. The small larval entry holes are often hidden beneath the calyx and difficult to detect during commercial grading. Greenhouse-raised seedlings of the TYLCV resistant variety ‘Tygress’ were planted 22 Mar at 18-inch spacing on two sets of three beds. Beds were 32 inches wide, 250 ft long on 6-ft centers, covered with black polyethylene film. The outer two beds of each set of three was divided into eight plots, each 31 ft long and assigned to treatments in a RCB design with four replications. The middle row of each 3-bed set was left untreated to serve as a source of pinworms. Approximately 20% of the fertilizer was pre-plant soil incorporated and 80% applied through the drip tape. In addition to insecticide treatments, maintenance fungicides of Kocide and Maneb were applied weekly to control foliar diseases at rates of 2 lbs and 1 or 2 lbs per 100 gal respectively. A high-clearance sprayer was used operating at 180 psi and 2.3 mph with the spray delivered through two vertical booms using yellow Albuz hollow cone nozzles that applied 10 gpa each. When the plants were small, two nozzles on each boom were used, and then, as the plants grew taller, additional nozzles were added to maintain spray coverage. As nozzles were added, the gallons per acre increased, but the product rate per acre of insecticides was kept constant. Applications began at 40 gpa and ended at 100 gpa when the crop was mature. PSG (PureGreen Spray) oil was applied weekly starting the third week after transplant. The rest of the weekly treatments were begun six wks after transplant when daily captures in wing-type sticky traps baited with TPW pheromone (Scentry) placed along one edge of the field exceeded three TPW moths and larvae were observed feeding on foliage (Table 1). The standard treatment consisted of alternate treatments of first Asana XL 0.66EC at 8 fl oz/acre and then Avaunt 30 WG at 3.5 oz/acre. TPW larvae were sampled weekly starting 2 May by removing end trifoliate leaflets from leaves from the lower part of the plants. As the crop matured, the leaves had to be sampled farther up on the plant because of deterioration of the lower leaves from bacterial spot disease. A visual assessment of the disease severity rated as percentage of leaf tissue affected by symptoms of bacterial spot caused by Xanthomonas campestris pv. vesicatoria was conducted on 6,10 and 28 May. One leaf from the lower canopy of 8 plants was collected on 2, 9, 16, and 23 May to evaluate whitefly parasitism. Leaves were held in 8 ×12-inch paper envelopes for emergence of whiteflies and parasitoids that were later counted. Vacuum samples were taken on 9 and 13 Jun and later inspected to separate and count all parasitic hymenoptera. Fifteen plants were harvested twice from each plot, and fruit was graded as marketable or culls. Marketable fruit was sorted by size according to USDA standards and damage determined to have been caused by damage by TPW or SAW. Data were subjected to ANOVA and means were separated using LSD (P ≤ 0.05).