Vegetable entomology research will be represented with 5 talks at this year’s Great Lakes Expo. Zsofia will be giving entomology research updates in the carrot, celery, onion, asparagus and potato sessions. The Expo will be held at DeVos Place Convention Center in Grand Rapids, MI.

Zsofia will be giving a presentation on Colorado potato beetle insecticide resistance monitoring that has been conducted by Ed Grafius and Adam Byrne over the past 10 years. In collaboration with the Spatial Ecology team at MSU, we transformed the dataset into information presented on maps over time.

On Nov. 4, MSU Extension educators and specialists are organizing a one-day workshop on commercial vegetable production. Our lab is giving a presentation on Vegetable insect IPM. The workshop is held in Kalamazoo, MI.

Our new headspace collection setup is up and running as of today. Our first batch of samples are composed of different potato-relative plant species. We are currently examining the headspace composition of those potato ancestors that are resistant to Colorado potato beetles.

Take a look at the photos from two extension meetings: one from July 27 in Imlay city, MI and another, the onion twilight meeting in Martin, MI Aug 19, 2010.

Alex’s cabbage project is over (at least the field part of it)…check out the photos of the cabbage harvest.

Aster leafhoppers that were reared in the greenhouse were released in our carrot plots, testing the effect of trap crop borders, and borders with systemic and contact insecticide treatments.

For our aster leafhopper-weed interaction study in carrots, we transplanted our weeds at the Southwest Michigan Research Station.

On July 21 and 22, EPA employees along with MSU campus administrative personnel came to visit the vegetable industry in MI – field trips to different regions of MI took the group to all major vegetable growing regions. This was a great opportunity for the industry to raise issues of concern and bring it to the attention of people in regulatory roles. The attendees received information on ongoing research in different disciplines conducted on farm or at research stations. Potato meeting

Our collaborative experiment with Dave Douches requires the use of large field cages to test potato lines for resistance to Colorado potato beetles. Field cages were set up on July 8 and 9 on MSU campus. Thanks to all the busy hands from the Douches and Szendrei labs who helped in this effort!