Our role is to improve the sustainability of citrus, avocado, dates, and other specialty fruit crop production in California through better management of arthropod pests and vectors of plant pathogens.
Our research approach employs a mix of ecoinformatics, field agroecology and laboratory molecular & organismal entomology experiments. The research pipeline begins directly with growers and pest control advisors (PCAs) to analyze field scouting and grove management records pooled from many farms across a region. This helps to gain an area-wide, broad scale overview of pest trends and issues across the range of growing conditions for a particular crop. The observational data is used in conjunction with researcher-generated data from controlled experiments to test specific hypotheses about pest effects and management with cooperating growers, and at AgOps and ANR RECs.