Tropical Fruit IPM Website
Project description and objectives:
A tropical fruit IPM website is proposed. The website will be customer friendly, providing, pest's basic information, identification and several pest management options in the home backyard by choosing the type of pest that the customer will have. The first visual aid will consist of high resolution color photographs of insects and mites common to tropical fruits in Florida. These arthropods will be grouped into clusters(i.e., chewing insects, sucking insects, soil insects, beneficial insects and spiders) to aid in identification. The customer will click on the arthropod group to go to a magnification view of the photo. When the customers find the arthropod that they wish to to identify, they will click on the photo and they will receive a page of detailed information that describes the insect and how it damages fruit crops. At the bottom of the detail page, the customer can search for the IPM tropical fruit data base for cultural, biological and chemical controls of the pest. Pull down menus will used to check the box that will lead to the control strategy that the customer will wish to use.
The specific objectives are:
1. Provide home owners who grow tropical fruit in Florida with control and management options of avocado and mango. Depending on the success, the website will
include in the future management options for litchi, longan, guava, carambola, papaya, sapodilla, lime, atemoya, sugar apple in Florida.
2. Link this website to the current IPM Florida website.
Project leaders:
Dr. Jorge Pena, Professor, Tropical Research and Education Center, Homestead
Dr. Jonathan H. Crane, Professor, Extension Specialist, TREC-Homestead
Carlos Balerdi, Extension Agent IV, Fruit Crops Multi County