The annual reports are broken up into sections. Click on the tab heading to view the report section submitted by the respective section investigation leader.
California: Mike Devencenzi, Joseph Grant (UCCE), Jed Walton, Dr. Marshall Johnson (UC Riverside, outside scientist), Carolyn Pickel and Walt Bentley (UCIPM), Drs. Pete Goodell, Lucia Verela and Tunyalee Martin (UCIPM)
Oregon: Rich Garvin, Bruce Decker, Jeff Olsen (OSU Extension)
Washington: Dan Flick, Nick Stephens, Karen Lewis (WSU Extension), Dr. Doug Walsh (WSU, outside scientist)
Canada: Dr. Gary Judd (Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, outside scientist)
Our project has just finished the fourth year of five. We have finished all the field work and nearly all the laboratory work and are in the process of analyzing, synthesizing, writing, and making outreach presentations.
One of our major accomplishments this past year was the two-day biological control (BC) short course that were held in three locations by teleconference on 7-8 February. We had 75 attendees, and 11 speakers from California, Washington, and Oregon covering 15 topics on basic and applied aspects of BC in orchards. The course consisted of presentations, case studies, and interaction with the instructors. It was followed up with a natural enemy identification and sampling course presented at field days at Hood River and the WSU-Sunrise orchard in Wenatchee in August. Information from the courses is on the web site, including narrated presentations from the short course. Attendees were enthusiastic the course (see Obj. 6).
Our web site (enhancedbiocontrol.org) is also undergoing continuous upgrades as the field and laboratory research is being completed, and we are adding video stories describing the methods and results of our research. The web site was re-done this year to allow content to be viewed on desktops, laptops, and tablet/smartphones (see Obj. 6).
A major goal for our project this coming year will be the publication of 14 scientific articles in the journal Biological Control as a special issue. These publications will cover all aspects of the project from beginning to end, and will include laboratory and field results as well as our successes and failures in outreach. Working with a high quality journal like Biological Control ensures that the information will reach a broad audience and that it is available both on-line and in larger libraries for the foreseeable future (see Output).
Finally, we are still aggressively pursuing funding that will allow us to proceed with logical extensions to our project. We have leveraged the funding provided by USDA-NIFA with another $1.2 M (approved or under review) from various sources since the start of the project (see Output).
Although the project directors are ultimately responsible for the work
done in this project, there is also a key group of post-doctoral research scientists and
technical support personnel that have been essential to our project through their dedication and
hard work. We gratefully acknowledge their efforts to make the project a success:
USDA-NIFRA SCRI grant #2008-04854
