Pesticides as Smog: New Regulations Coming in California to Reduce VOC Emissions from Pesticides

Beginning November 1, new regulations take effect in California to reduce smog-forming volatile organic compound emissions from pesticide applications.

The restrictions will apply to nonfumigant, high-VOC products containing abamectin, chlorpyrifos, gibberellins, or oxyfluorfen used in the San Joaquin Valley ozone nonattainment area. The regulations do not apply to low-VOC products for any active ingredients.

The California Department of Pesticide Regulation has information online to help people prepare. One is a web-based tool for calculating VOC emissions. Try it here.

Fact sheets and all the rules and regulations concerning VOC-emitting pesticides can be downloaded here.

Insects au Gratin?

The latest issue of Utah Pests News is out, and includes several stories you might expect - managing summer fire blight, trap cropping to manage grasshoppers, and arthropod traps for home, garden and agriculture.

Then it has the story you might not expect - gastronomic insects. 

Citing the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization, the article notes that, "in the future, insects could be essential to feeding the world’s population. Insects are nutritious, can generate jobs, and their production is safer for the environment than other protein sources such as beef."

Check it out here.

Hot off the Press: IPM Field Guide for Northwest Vineyards

Grape growers throughout the Pacific Northwest now have access to a great new integrated pest management field guide that was just published by the Pacific Northwest Extension.

The full-color, 132-page guide was funded by a Western IPM Center grant.

The guide introduces IPM practices and covers all aspects of vineyard pest management in an easy-to-read, spiral-bound book format. Sections are color-coded to enable quick flipping to the desired topic, and the paper is a coated stock that will stand up to several seasons in the door pocket of a pickup.

Filled with photos, the guide highlights the following:

• Resistance management and buffers
• Viticulture practices and IPM
• Insect and mite management
• Beneficial arthropods
• Disease managements
• Nematode management
• Weed management
• Abiotic stresses and disorders, and vertebrate damage

The Pacific Northwest Extension is a cooperative venture  between Washington State University, Oregon State University and the University of Idaho. In addition to Western IPM Center funding, the Washington Wine Industry Foundation also provided support for printing and distributing the guide.

Copies will be available at various WSU Viticulture extension events throughout the year, or can be ordered through these links: Washington State, Oregon State, University of Idaho. 

Subscribe for Western IPM Center News and Updates

A lot of information comes through the Western IPM Center - new RFA and grant announcements, meeting updates, pest alerts, updates about the cool stuff we've got going on on, and more.

We post it all on our website at www.wripmc.org, but are now beginning to also send out regular updates for interested readers. Updates go out as news comes in, but rarely more often than weekly. And, to make it even more reader-friendly, we've broken down our subscription list into categories, so folks can chose to get just the information that's useful to them.

We'd love to add you to the list. Subscribe here, and stay in touch with the latest IPM news and developments in the West. Thanks!

Learn IPM Practices for Mouse Control with these Videos

With funding assistance from the Western IPM Center, the Northwest Center for Alternatives to Pesticides produced three video about mouse control, focusing on sanitation, trapping and exclusion. The videos are about five to eight minutes long.

While originally developed to assist schools in Oregon, the techniques explained in the videos can be used by anyone with a mouse infestation - or anyone who wants to prevent one. The link below will take you to the exclusion video, and the links to the other two video are also on the page.

http://www.sustainableplaces.org/general-ipm/mouse-control-exclusion