Graduate Student University of Florida Wimauma, Florida
Florida is the second largest producer of strawberries in the United States, generating over $300 million annually. Currently in Florida, the strawberry pest complex is mainly composed of Scirtothrips dorsalis Hood and Tetranychus urticae Koch. Recently, the use of biological control agents, particularly predatory mites in conjunction with insecticides to manage these pests has become prevalent. Nonetheless, the effect of these insecticides on the survival of the predatory mites remains to be established. Therefore, three predatory mites Amblyseius swirskii, Neoseiulus cucumeris, and Neoseiulus californicus commonly used in Florida were purchased from commercial suppliers. Predatory mites were reared to obtain the first generation which was then exposed to Radiant, Exirel, Azera, Captiva Prime, Mycotrol ESO and PFR-97 20%.and a control for 120 hours. Our results show that exposing mites to an insecticide reduces their survival from 81.6% (79.0% - 90.5%) down to 16.5% (12.5% - 21.3%) with Radiant and Exirel possessing the lowest predatory mite survival (2.5%- (1.0% - 5.4% and 22.3% (14.7% - 32.7%) respectively). On the other hand, Captiva Prime is on average less harmful, giving them a 17.9% probability of survival (11.1% - 27.1%), than Azera (8.2% (4.5% - 13.8%)) while Mycotrol ESO and PFR-97 had the highest mite survival of 23.7%, CI: 17.3% - 31.9% more than any other products. These results provide a new perspective on how to develop more efficient predatory mite – insecticide combinations that facilitate increased efficacy of predatory mites for better S. dorsalis suppression and reducing the rate of insecticide resistance development.
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