Help identify new pesticide needs through an IR-4 survey

Growers can help identify new pesticide needs for pest problems by submitting a brief survey. The IR-4 Project has supplied data to gain hundreds of new registrations for pesticides on ornamentals over the past 20 years.

Take a few minutes to complete the  IR-4 Ornamental Horticulture Program Survey. This survey helps to identify local, regional and national pest management holes where there are limited or no tools to manage disease, pest, and weed populations. It also identifies key crops where crop safety information is needed.

As a grower of greenhouse flowers, nursery stock, Christmas trees, or herbaceous perennials there are some situations where you do not have pest control materials that will give reliable control to your problem. Identify those situations on the survey to help direct researchers to work toward solutions. We all know that pesticide resistance, invasive species, changing pest populations and crop safety (phytotoxicity) are issues that contribute to pest control problems in our industries.

Michigan State University Extension faculty like David Smitley and William Kirk receive funding from The IR-4 Project and conduct trials to obtain new registrations for ornamental pesticides. The outcomes from this survey will serve as discussion points for the 2014/2015 IR-4 Ornamental Horticulture Program priorities for national and regional research projects.

The survey will close August 31, 2013. Please take a few minutes today to voice your needs for pest management tools. Once again the link to the survey is: http://www.ir4.rutgers.edu/Ornamental/Survey/index.cfm

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