Pennsylvania IPM Report, 2019

NEERA meeting: May 1, 2019, College Park, MD

Ed Rajotte, IPM Coordinator

PAIPM delivers both urban and agricultural IPM education. The programs listed below are at least partially funded by USDA-NIFA IPM Extension funds.

Urban – Dion Lerman, Philadelphia

  • 41 trainings reaching over 1,300 participants
  • 35 Home Assessments (IPM for CR & Mice) for CAPP
  • 12 homes treated with Aprehend
  • 2 school walk-throughs
  • Planned and conducted Rodent Academy with Dr. Bobby Corrigan for School District of Philadelphia
  • Staff training for:
    • Community Asthma Prevention Program (CAPP), Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP)
    • Lead & Healthy Homes Program, Philadelphia Dept. of Public Health (PDPH)
    • Healthy Homes Program, National Nurse-led Care Consortium (NNCC)
    • Allentown Health Bureau
    • Philadelphia Veteran’s Multi-Service Center
  • Hoarding Webinar for Healthy Housing Solutions/HUD – presented live 4 times.
  • Outreach events (n=6(?)) in partnership with the Franklin Institute
  • Presented at the 9th International IPM Symposium, Baltimore, MD, March
  • Presented at the 10th Asthma Disparity Conference, CAPP, Philadelphia, October
  • Attended Global Bed Bug Summit, Denver, CO, November
  • Working with Managed Care Organizations (MCO’s) to implement new Medicaid benefit of IPM services

School and Childcare (curriculum/facilities) Related – Michelle Niedermeier, Philadelphia

  • IPM for PA Schools Manual – New revision out in a few weeks
  • PA Green & Healthy Schools Partnership (executive committee)
  • Health Services Advisory Council Meetings:
    • Health Federation of Philadelphia Early Head Start
    • CHOP Early Head Start
    • CDI Head Start
  • School District of Philadelphia – Green Futures, Healthy Schools
  • Summer Sustainability Boot Camp
  • Healthy Schools Coalition – conference call
  • Attended the Pennsylvania Association of Environmental Educators 2-day conference
  • Met with PDE and PDEP to discuss/reboot the K–12 Academic State E&E Standards (IPM)

K–12 Youth Programming

  • Central High School Earth Day – “pests, parasites, predators, and pollinators” interactive discussion/lecture (160 HS students)
  • The Philadelphia School – “mouthpart madness” activity (25 preschoolers)

Asthma Related

  • CHOP CAPP
    • WePACC meetings
    • 10th Annual Fighting Asthma Disparities Summit
  • Planning Committee Meeting
  • Event
  • Pennsylvania Asthma Partnership – Statewide meeting (1 = 30 people), regional conference calls (5 = 80 people)

Climate Change Related

  • Climate and Urban Systems Partnership (CUSP) with the Franklin Institute – meetings, and outreach events
  • Philadelphia Department of Public Health, Climate Change and Health Advisory Group meetings

Urban/Ag Related

  • Rodale Stroud Water Outreach conference call meeting
  • Lead and nutrition event conference call discussion with ATSDR
  • “Growing a Sustainable City” workshop

Philadelphians against Bed Bugs (PhABB)

Meetings and outreach events. Bed bug legislation pending before Phila City Council.

Arthropod disease vectors

  • PDP meeting (Erika Machtinger) – insect vectors of disease to humans and animals Public Health
  • UPenn, MPH program talk (Pests, Pesticides & Health)

Agronomic – John Tooker and agronomy team

In 2018, we continued to trap for black cutworm. We had 23 traps in 17 counties, monitoring by 12 extension educator and the students of one high school agricultural educator. We detected only one significant flight of black cutworm, which was in Potter County. Most weeks of our 6-week trapping effort, I wrote newsletter articles updating readers on the status of our trapping and what the results mean. Our Field Crop Newsletter reaching about 7,000 folks in the agricultural community.

We also continued our ongoing Soybean Sentinel Plot Program, which has been funded by the PA Soybean Promotion Board for the last seven years. The goal of this projects is to track insect and disease pest populations in typical soybean fields around the state and share this information with growers. Fourteen extension educators around PA are participating in this effort, tracking populations in 26 fields in 20 counties. In 2018, as in past years, our scouting efforts have discovered a fairly narrow range of insects and only a few diseases. Generally, pest populations in PA soybean fields were low, as was the case for the six previous years, and this is an important message for growers to hear: pest populations are not pervasive and always threatening soybean yield. In fact, in many locations and in most years, pest populations do not develop and thus pesticide use should provide no advantage.

I also continue to provide information to the agricultural community on the questionable value of neonicotinoid seed treatments. Our research continues to show that these ubiquitous insecticides provide little to no advantage, but leave fields more vulnerable to pest outbreaks because they host fewer natural enemies. Our research is showing that fields planted with neonic-coated seeds tend to have more slugs, which are very problematic in PA no-till fields, and fewer collembolans, which limits decomposition of crop and cover crop residue in crop fields.

Integrated Pest and Pollinator Management – David Biddinger, Margarita Lopez-Uribe

  • Integrated Pest and Pollinator Management (IPPM) being adopted.
  • Research results moved into grower recommendations.
  • Evidence for insecticidal and fungicidal toxicity to bees

Spotted Lanternfly – Heather Leach, Julie Urban

  • English and Spanish fact sheets https://extension.psu.edu/spotted-lanternfly
  • SLF has an established population in 4 states (PA, NJ, DE, VA) and has been detected in an additional 4 states (NY, MA, CT, MD) since its first detection in 2014
  • Significant yield losses in grape have been reported (up to 90%, including death of vines) and growers have increased their annual number of insecticide applications by 10 with associated increase in costs ($54/acre in 2016, $147/acre in 2018).
  • SLF is under a state quarantine in PA, NJ, and DE, with regulations on businesses to prevent further spread of SLF. For some businesses (e.g. nurseries), this has added enormous production costs to inspect and clean all material before shipping. This has also resulted in loss of customers from some states who don’t want to be responsible for the accidental spread of SLF.
  • Julie Urban leading USDA-SCRI CAPS proposal to request funding for research on spotted lanternfly for short-term and long-term management solutions. USDA-ARS, Virginia Tech, University of Delaware, University of Rhode Island, Temple University, Cornell University/NEIPMC, and Rutgers University are all partners on this proposal.
  • 2018 research highlights from PSU: