Uniroyal has new approach to mite control

摘要

As PCA Robert Hornyak inspected a peach tree near Gridley last summer, he knew right away that he'd never seen so many mites on a single tree. "I have no way of guessing how many two-spotted mites were on that tree, but it seemed like millions," recalls Hornyak, with Big Valley Ag in Gridley. "I'd never seen anything like it in my life--the entire tree was wrapped in a web." Ranch owner Jake Stowe also was taken back by the mite swarms. "It was a bad year for mites anyway, and we'd left that block completely untreated," says Stowe. "As a result, the peach trees were discolored and webbed over, and you could see mites running up and down the trunks." Fortunately, the infested peach trees were part of a miticide field test on Stowe Ranch, and mite damage was limited to the test block that Stowe had left untreated.