Location: Tropical Crop and Commodity Protection Research
Project Number: 2040-30400-002-000-D
Project Type: In-House Appropriated
Start Date: Oct 15, 2025
End Date: Oct 14, 2030
Objective:
Objective 1: Enhance the economic and biotic resilience of tropical and sub-tropical agroecosystems by optimizing pest and disease management and developing biological controls.
Sub-objective 1A: Increase the yields, quality, and profitability of coffee production in Hawai’i via biological control of coffee berry borer (CBB).
Sub-objective 1B: Improve coffee plant and soil health to minimize the negative impacts of coffee leaf rust (CLR) disease and increase farm profitability and sustainability.
Objective 2: Mitigate the biosecurity risk of invasive tropical pests of concern to agriculture by developing, testing, or guiding the deployment of improved pest detection, eradication, and control strategies.
Sub-objective 2A: Identify attractant for female oriental fruit fly using protein and microbial volatiles associated with food.
Sub-objective 2B: Test and identify optimal application densities of male annihilation technique (MAT) against tephritid fruit fly species that are not attracted to methyl eugenol and find applied methods to combine MAT or trapping with sterile insect technique (SIT) to eradicate fruit flies.
Sub-objective 2C: Identify pheromone component of invasive Queensland longhorn beetle (QLB).
Objective 3: Develop novel tools targeting invasive tropical pests by leveraging computer models and simulations and via next-generation research on behavior and chemical ecology.
Sub-objective 3A: Develop and apply harmonic radar (HR) to characterize tephritid fruit fly movement and use the generated data to create models of pest fly dispersal.
Sub-objective 3B: Improve IPM for avocado lace bug through the efficient and sustainable use of pesticides.
Approach:
Sub-objective 1A: Significantly reduce coffee berry borer (CBB) populations in coffee-growing regions across Hawai’i using classical and augmentative biological control with the parasitoid wasp Phymastichus coffea and integrate this biological control into a comprehensive IPM strategy for CBB.
Sub-objective 1B: Four sites on Hawai’i Island (two in Kona and two in Ka’u) will trial a rotation of commercially available granular and foliar fertilizers over a three-year period to determine optimal inputs, timing and application rates based on rainfall, plant age, phenology, and management strategy (conventional or organic). Fertilization programs will be designed for each farm based on results from soil/tissue analyses, economic analysis, and agronomic factor.
Sub-objective 2A: To develop synthetic chemical based female attractant for OFF, based on odor from protein sources and bacterial isolated from wild OFF gut. Using cage two choice experiments, several protein sources (e.g., torula yeast, yeast hydrolysate, baker’s yeast, shrimp, etc.) and bacterial species that are conserved among OFF females collected from different host fruit will be compared with torula yeast for their attractiveness to OFF females.
Sub-objective 2B: Rigorously quantify mortality in the field from MAT using less attractive lures and test if a similar density-based effect is seen as with methyl eugenol-Bactrocera dorsalis. This will expand the toolbox of countermeasures against species for which we don’t have the most powerful male lures, reducing reliance on broad-spectrum insecticides and SIT programs. The second part of this subobjective will combine SIT and MAT by generating lure-insensitive sterile males in the lab and testing them in the field for their capacity to knock down wild populations.
Sub-objective 2C: Collect and analyze volatiles emitted by live beetles to determine male-specific beetle compounds, which will be identified using microchemical and spectroscopic methods. We will optimize the attractiveness of pheromone by optimization of (1) the pheromone blend ratio, if there are more than one male specific compounds, (2) dose, and (3) lure longevity.
Sub-objective 3A: Quantify the movements of OFF and medfly using improved (smaller, increased range) HR tags and drone methods and create models of fly movement based on movement parameters and environmental data.
Sub-objective 3B: Derive economic injury level and develop an economic threshold model for avocado lace bug (ALB) based on cumulative, lace bug-induced leaf damage. To investigate how cumulative leaf drop effects yield, timing of soil drench treatments will be based on the proportion of mature leaves that exhibit areas of necrosis exceeding 35% of the leaf.
Sub-objective 3C: The biological control agent Fopius arisanus, as well as the host fruit fly Bactrocera dorsalis or another Tephritid will be used. Experiments will be conducted in an environmental chamber (ESPEC BTL-433) with computer-controlled temperature, humidity, and photoperiod, testing three temperature regimens to start. A second set of experiments will explore if including stressors in the mass rearing process can produce filler insects.