Fall Field Trial Updates

The fall trapping field trials are underway! We have successfully established trials at all three field sites in NY state (Fig. 1) - no flooding of fields, no frost - and we are catching flies to boot! It is true what they say, fall brings the ALM better than the spring (someone says that right?)

 

Fig. 1: ALM trapping trials have been established at three farms in southeast and central NY state.

At our leek location, the plants have gotten huge since the spring. The traps are no longer aligned with the top of the plants like they were when the plants were small in the spring (Fig. 2). Since we see ALM flies on the tips of the leaves, it is unclear whether the height of the traps will affect our results. There is a lot of fly activity though and a Gary cat, who loves back scratches from Riley (Fig. 3-4).

 

Fig. 2: Traps set in our leek trial. Such a beautiful location!

 

Fig. 3: Flies are active in our leek trial!

 

Fig. 4: Gary getting some back scratches from Riley

We have processed two weeks of traps from farms 1 (scallions) and 3 (leeks) so far. The results looks promising! We have captured more flies in a single week at farm 1 than we did in our 6 week trial there in the spring. So far we are seeing that the black and yellow striped trap is capturing more than double the number of flies than the other colors at farm 1 and slightly more than all others at farm 3 (Fig. 5). Will still have 2-4 more weeks of data at all three farms to collect this season and I am looking forward to what we find!

 

Fig. 5: Total ALM captured on different colored traps at two farms in fall 2019.