UDAF Battles Plum Curculio - Fruit Growers are Asked to Join the Fight

The Utah Department of Agriculture and Food (UDAF) is asking fruit growers throughout Utah to join the battle against Plum Curculio. The insect can be considered public enemy number one to the state's 20 million dollar fruit industry if not quickly controlled. The six legged enemy is a quarter-inch long brown and gray snout beetle that lays its eggs inside apples, pears, cherries, plums, peaches and apricots, causing larva to grow inside the fruit.

The discovery of the Plum Curculio in Box Elder county has caused California and other states to place a quarantine of fruit exports from that county . The UDAF is working to prevent any additional quarantines from being imposed on Utah fruit growers.

"We are asking both commercial and backyard fruit growers to help us in the fight," said Dick Wilson, director of the UDAF's Division of Plant Industry. "Owners of small fruit orchards are encouraged to apply insecticides such as Malathion, Methoxychlor, Imidan or Guthion," Wilson adds.

Most commercial growers already protect their crops with chemical applications. The UDAF is asking that non-commercial growers help prevent the spread of Plum Curcuio by also beginning a spray program.

The critical time to first apply insecticide is at the petal fall stage of fruit development, which will prevent the adult beetle from laying eggs in fruit and continuing its life cycle. Additional spraying may be needed. Other controls are the removal of infested trees if they will not be maintained, and clean-up of limb, leaf or litter piles.

One orchardist elected to remove approximately 550 fruit trees from his orchard as a means of combating the insect.

In effort to lift the quarantine the UDAF has initiated, through the Utah State University Extension Service, a Plum Curculio trapping and detection project to document the location of the insect and develop methods to eradicate or best control the pest. The project will run through the end of June, 1999 and focus on the insect's genetics and best control methods.

This spring the UDAF and the Utah State University Extension Service will launch a battle against the beetle with a door-to-door information campaign. Residents in fruit-growing counties will be receiving flyers attached to doorknobs, read information in the media and see bulletins on gardening hotlines.

Anyone suspecting the presence of Plum Curculio is invited to call their local UDAF inspector at (435) 734-3328 (Brigham City), or (801) 370-8494 (Provo).

Posted March 24, 1998