Oriental fruit moth flight

Greetings, We captured one oriental fruit moth (OFM) in each of two traps here at the Winchester AREC on Sunday night and one in the third trap on Monday night (i.e. OFM flight in this area has begun, although at a trickle). As we have discussed before, biofix is determined when sustained flight and captures of moths over several consecutive days has occurred. Setting biofix for OFM is usually a bit of a judgement call, because captures tend start and stop repeatedly based on daily weather variations at this time of the season. The weather forecast for Winchester shows a maximum temperature of 59 F or lower through Friday, and I wouldn’t be surprised if few or no additional moths are captured until the weekend. In central Virginia, a grower reported that he caught a total of 4 OFM between Mar 27 and 29, and is calling biofix for Mar 27. The weather in central Virginia is due to warm more quickly than Winchester, and daily temperatures there at 63 F or higher starting on Thursday will likely result in more sustained OFM flight. So, the take-home message is that if you are in central Virginia and have OFM sprayable pheromone in your plan for first generation control, application in the coming days would be good. If you are in the region including Winchester, it’s a bit premature to apply OFM sprayable pheromone, but I will keep you posted regarding our captures here.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *