Australia: Webinar focuses on common nursery pest
These are some of the take home messages Dr Andrew Manners and John Duff from the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries (DAF) delivered to nursery producers and industry representatives during a recent Mite identification and management webinar.
The one hour presentation covered a range of topics that are highly relevant to production nurseries, including how to identify common groups of pest mites, monitoring techniques, available control options and resources for further information. Attendees were given the opportunities to ask questions and participate in polls during the presentation.
Dr Manners used the webinar platform to encourage growers to be proactive in keeping on top of mite populations, particularly during favourable conditions and on plants prone to damage. He stressed that growers need to ensure the symptoms are diagnosed correctly before management actions are taken. Those who are unsure about what type of mite is present can use the resources available to them, such as factsheets, pest management plans, the PestID Tool and diagnostic testing.
Those that were unable to attend the webinar and interested in learning more about these common nursery pests are invited to view the online recording and presentation on the Nursery and Garden Industry Australia (NIGA) YouTube channel.
The webinar was the latest instalment of a biosecurity webinar series, part of the nursery levy funded project Building the resilience and on-farm biosecurity capacity of the Australian production nursery industry (NY15002). The project is a collaboration between NGIA, Horticulture Innovation Australia and DAF.
The next webinar, Virus identification, vectors and management will be held 18 May at 10am AEST. It will discuss how to identify virus-like symptoms and steps to confirm if a virus is present. The presentation will target viruses that pose a risk to production nurseries, with strong emphasis on virus vectors and other mechanisms of spread.
Source: Your Levy at Work