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ARS Home » Northeast Area » Kearneysville, West Virginia » Appalachian Fruit Research Laboratory » Innovative Fruit Production, Improvement, and Protection » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #313076
Title: Spatial distribution of brown marmorated stink bug (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae) injury at harvest in mid-Atlantic apple orchards

Author
item JOSEPH, SHIMAT - Virginia Tech
item STALLINGS JONATHAN, W - North Carolina State University
item Leskey, Tracy
item KRAWCZYK, GREG - Pennsylvania State University
item POLK, DEAN - Rutgers University
item BUTLER, BRYAN - University Of Maryland
item BERGH, JAMES - Virginia Tech

Submitted to: Journal of Economic Entomology
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 7/6/2014
Publication Date: 10/1/2014
Citation: Joseph, S.V., Stallings Jonathan, W., Leskey, T.C., Krawczyk, G., Polk, D., Butler, B., Bergh, J.C. 2014. Spatial distribution of brown marmorated stink bug (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae) injury at harvest in mid-Atlantic apple orchards. Journal of Economic Entomology. 107(5):1839-1848.

Interpretive Summary: Brown marmorated stink bug is an invasive species accidently introduced from Asia between the middle to late 1990s. In 2010, this insect is estimated to have caused $37 million in damage to mid-Atlantic apple orchards. To better understand the threat posed by this invasive species to apple orchards, we quantified the amount of injury to apples in orchard blocks planted with the late-season cultivar, Fuji. Researchers found that injury was greatest in trees at or close to the border of orchard blocks compared with trees closer to the interior. We also found that injury was greatest at the highest points in the canopy compared with the middle or lower canopy. These results indicate that scouting for BMSB and/or BMSB injury should be conducted at the orchard border and at the tops of trees to best detect BMSB presence and potential problems. In addition, border tactics such as border sprays or attract and kill may hold promise because this bug invades orchard blocks from the outside.

Technical Abstract: Brown marmorated stink bug's, Halyomorpha halys (Stal), injury to late-season apple cultivars was measured at harvest in 2011 and 2012 in commercial orchards in four mid-Atlantic states. In each orchard block, a border zone (adjacent to woods), an interior zone (near orchard center), and an intermediate zone (between border and interior zones) was comprised of 1-3 tree rows per zone, depending on block size. Just before commercial harvest, 10 fruit were sampled from the upper, middle and lower third of the canopy from 5 trees in each zone. After 3-5 weeks in cold storage, fruit were examined for external and internal injury, and severity of internal injury (number of injury sites per fruit) from H. halys. A zero-inflated negative binomial (ZINB) model accounted for significant variation among the orchards and showed that apples from the upper canopy of border zone trees had the highest probability of experiencing external and internal injury. A minor interaction was detected among the orchards and zones for injury prevalence and severity, but there was no evidence of an orchard showing less expected injury in the border zone compared with other zones. Adjusting for orchard-to-orchard variation, differences in injury distributions among the zones and canopies were primarily due to injury prevalence rather than expected injury severity. The implications of these results to scouting and managing H. halys in eastern apple orchards are discussed.