Attune Agriculture is offering results from a new study conducted on strawberries, showing that only focusing on dead bugs does not always equate to what ultimately matters most for growers: more yield.
The comprehensive trial was performed at the Florida Ag Research facility in Thonotosassa, FL. In Florida, chili thrips have become one of the more difficult pests to control. Many growers are trying chemical or organic rotations as no single chemistry is providing sufficient control.
Entrapment® insecticide was evaluated against a standard organic rotation and a standard chemical rotation:
Entrapment and the organic rotation were comparable in most evaluated categories. The conventional rotation produced the most dead bugs. However, there was a difference in total marketable yield.
The Entrapment rotation produced 195 more pounds of marketable strawberries per acre than the organic rotation. That calculates to about $912 more per acre*. The rotation that performed the worst in terms of marketable yield was the chemical rotation, with 234 pounds less than the Entrapment rotation.
In addition, the Entrapment rotation is 16% more economical in cost than the organic rotation, bringing the total economic impact to an extra $969 per acre for the grower. Compared to the conventional rotation, the economic impact is an extra $1,072 per acre.
"This study confirms what we have heard anecdotally from our growers, that yield is often increased with the addition of Attune products, even in cases where traditional factors used to measure control, such as insect counts, do not seem dramatically different," says Dr. Ed Quattlebaum, Director of Product Development at Attune Agriculture. "Plant health is multi-dimensional and complex. This study shows that Entrapment not only provided comparable insect control, it also impacted the overall health of the plant, resulting in a higher yield than either the chemical or organic rotations."
For more information:
Attune Agriculture
attuneag.com/