{"id":886,"date":"2026-06-02T14:07:40","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T18:07:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/vegpath\/?p=886"},"modified":"2026-06-02T14:23:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T18:23:09","slug":"uga-vegetables-podcast-episode-1-transcript","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/vegpath\/2026\/06\/uga-vegetables-podcast-episode-1-transcript\/","title":{"rendered":"UGA Vegetables Podcast Episode 1 Transcript"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Transcript from UGA Vegetables on Apple Podcast to listen to the Episode visit https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/uga-vegetables-podcast-episode-1\/id1804699266?i=1000700964403<\/a>; UGA Vegetables Podcast Episode 1 features Dr. Stormy Sparks (Vegetable Entomologist) and Ty Torrance (UGA Multi-County Vegetable Extension Agent) to discuss vegetable insect pests, lifecycle and management, top production issues, and interesting research being conducted at the University of Georgia.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By: UGA Vegetables Podcast \u2013 Published March 26, 2025 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Intro Dialogue: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Intiaz Chowdhury <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Welcome everyone to the University of Georgia Vegetable Podcast. I’m your co-host Intiaz Chowdhury, vegetable and cotton nematologist here at UGA. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Ted McAvoy <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m your other co-host, Dr. Ted McAvoy, vegetable extension specialist here at the University of Georgia Tifton campus. So, the purpose of this podcast is to bring South Georgia vegetable growers and vegetable growers across the southeastern United States timely information about planting, pest control, and crop management. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Intiaz Chowdhury <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And if you’re interested, keep tuning in. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Start of Episode 1: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Ted McAvoy <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And today we have two special guests. We have Ty Torrance, multi-county extension agent, and Dr. Stormy Sparks, UGA vegetable entomologist. Stormy, why don’t we start with you, go ahead and introduce yourself and tell us what you do here at the university. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Stormy Sparks <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah, I’m Stormy Sparks. I’m an extension vegetable entomologist. My primary responsibility is insect control and commercial vegetable production throughout Georgia. Obviously, we work mostly in South Georgia because that’s where most of the vegetable production is. I’ve been in this role since July of 2002. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Ted McAvoy <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Excellent. The world-famous Stormy. And go ahead, Ty. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Ty Torrance <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah, I was in middle school when Stormy started. So, I’ve been in extension for 10 years and I’ve been the Tri-County vegetable agent for five years. I cover Tift, Colquitt, and Worth counties. And those are just kind of a concentrated region of high value vegetable crops. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Intiaz Chowdhury <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ted, why don’t you also introduce yourself? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Ted McAvoy <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah, I’m Ted McAvoy. I’m the vegetable extension specialist. So I do variety trials, soil amendments, fertilizers and I’ve been here since October 2021. Came from the vegetable seed industry working for Syngenta Seeds. And how about you, Intiaz? What do you do? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Intiaz Amin Chowdhury <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, I joined UGA 2022 August. So, I think both of us combined have less time in UGA than each of these individuals. But my program here focuses on plant parasitic nematodes, essentially trying to optimize and develop management solutions for them. The crops I typically focus on are vegetables, cotton, and a little bit of pecan as well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Ted McAvoy <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Excellent. So Stormy, that’s a unique name. How did you get that name? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Stormy Sparks <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, my name is actually Alton. I’m Alton Sparks Jr. My father was an entomologist as well. He worked with ARS, and he went by Sparky. Nobody ever uses the Alton name. And I was born in Lubbock, Texas, October 22nd. A northern blue in the night they tried trying to get to the hospital. They had a great deal of difficulty getting there because of the stormy weather. So that’s where the name came from and what I’ve always been called. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Ted McAvoy <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Excellent. We got Mr. T. Tell us about that, Ty. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Ty Torrance <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah, so I had the opportunity to go to the Philippines with Bob Kemerait and I’m not sure why it was Ty got shortened to T and everybody there called me Mr. T, which was hilarious to us because I’m just a skinny redneck and don’t look anything like the actual Mr. T. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Ted McAvoy <\/p>\n\n\n\n

All right, so the objective of this podcast is to bring vegetable growers and listeners across the state timely information about vegetable production. Here we are at the end of February and we just want to start out with Stormy and Ty. Stormy, we’ll start with you. What are the pests that we’re encountering now and what are the pests that we need to look out for coming up and how do we manage those pests? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Stormy Sparks <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah, this time of year is really generally fairly slow for entomology because most insects are sensitive to weather conditions, cold temperatures; the biology slows down if it doesn’t shut down. But we do have some things that can be showing up right now, such as probably the one we would be most concerned about would be diamondback moth. It’s kind of unique. You know, a lot of insects, whiteflies, you know you’re going to have them when it’s hot and dry. Spider mites hot and dry. Broad mites like it kind of humid and warm. Diamondback can show up or disappear any time of the year. 20 years ago, David Riley used to say, you can park your sprayers in October because nothing happened during the winter and that’s just not the case anymore. Diamondback we we’ve actually last year was pretty light year for diamondback moth we didn’t have any large populations until very late in the year probably December  we had some large population outbreaks in  Grady County  and those have actually held on a little bit even after the snow Cale Cloud down in Grady County County agent went out and looked at some of the fields problem fields after the snow had melted and found diamondback moth larvae very easily. And that’s one of the questions you always get when we get these cold spells is just what is that doing to the insects? Is it killing them? Some it will kill, but for the most part, the ones we consistently have problems with, like diamondback moth, it slows them down, but it doesn’t kill them. So they’re not reproducing as rapidly, but they’re still out there. And when it warms up, they kick right back in. Similarly, whiteflies. There were a lot of whiteflies in crops like kale before the snow. We went out and tried to sample afterwards and really couldn’t find any adult whiteflies to sample. I think I checked about four or five fields and I found one adult whiteflies. So we got a lot of mortality of adults, but it didn’t get cold enough to kill the immatures. So they’ll be back. And what really happens with a lot of these insects is you’re not killing the insect, you’re killing the host plants, such as whiteflies. You know, they really like cucurbit crops, which don’t, you know, and weeds, they don’t like cold weather. So you get a freeze, you kill off most of those host plants, and that impacts the whitefly population. You’re not getting a direct effect on the insect. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Intiaz Chowdhury <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So the growers should still continue to actively manage them as they do. this year as well with the cold spell. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Stormy Sparks <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah, it’s again, it’s species specific. Diamondback moth is one that you’ll see right now. You want to monitor, control them if they’re building. But for the most part, most of our insects this time of year are not really building populations. But you always, you’re always scouting. Ty can tell you that. That’s what he does. What about 56 weeks out of the year? Yeah. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Ted McAvoy <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So Ty, you probably see more fields than the rest of us. How’s the winter crop looking this year and what’s going on as far as spring activity? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Ty Torrance <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think it was a very interesting year for us winter crop wise because we did have 6 inches of snow. I feel like we learned a lot about how everything we have that time of year will respond to that. But I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to put that information to use again because it may not ever snow 6 inches again in Tifton. But I feel like we did learn a lot. Crops that were established in the ground like cabbage and kale and collard may have been completely covered in snow. And we believe that may have actually been a benefit as far as insulating them because the night after, or maybe two nights after, we were, I think it was 18 degrees in some areas. So the snow possibly insulated and protected those crops a little bit more. And honestly, after the snow melted, the plants, you could tell that they were a little off color, kind of stuck, stressed a little bit. But the majority of them grew out of that and performed well. There was a couple of locations that had newly set transplants. So young, very young plants. And I think they had to reset some plants in those situations. But crops that were already growing and maturing, I think they responded a lot better than we thought they would. As far as what’s going on right now, there’s a lot of people laying plastic, started to lay plastic probably middle to end of December. And we’ll continue looking forward to about a March 10th, 15th start date for all of our warm season crops. That’s kind of a green light for everybody. So still actively laying plastic and trying to prepare land. We get a lot of spotty showers this time of year. So it pays to get your plastic laid as soon as you can, really, starting in mid-December to be prepared and not behind the 8 ball. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Intiaz Chowdhury <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do we have any information how this year is going to be turn out to be weather-wise, rain-wise? Is it going to be a more rainy year or not? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Ty Torrance <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ll have Bob on next week. He’ll give you the entire weather report. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Intiaz Chowdhury <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this is it like la nina year, right? Or I don’t know. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Stormy Sparks <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saying in South Georgia, what happens, happens. If you don’t like what happens, give it 10 minutes. That’s pretty much the way it goes with weather. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Ted McAvoy <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So we mentioned laying plastic and fumigating. This comes into your wheelhouse, Intiaz. Tell us about scouting or what nematicides we should be using. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Intiaz Chowdhury <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nematode-wise, I was thinking the situation is similar for nematodes as well with the winter we had this year with the snow and the ice. The nematodes are not going to go away, but what we may have is reduced pressure because their metabolic activity is reduced as the temperature goes down. What was your question again? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Ted McAvoy <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just, you know, best fumigant management or non-fumigant nematicides. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Intiaz Amin Chowdhury <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, fumigants wise at this time, Telon continues to be the best option that we have for nematode management. We do have others like chloropicrin and Vapam and KPAM. They do some level of control the nematodes, but not to the level as we see with Telon. With Telon, I know Ty was asking about a question about the depth of Telon. The deeper we go, the longer it will stay in the soil and may have better efficacy, but we don’t want to keep it in the soil for as long as we, forever, right? Because they have phytotoxicity to the plants. So that 16 inches that we have now is more for that zone where we want to keep it for that right amount of time. But depending on the soil, let’s say you have a sandy soil, you may want to go deeper so that you keep it there for longer and it spreads better. Also another thing I think is about covering with plastic, right? You want to cover it as soon as possible because you want to, all the things that you do put in, you want to keep it in the soil in that beginning time of your fumigation so that you can get the most stuff out of it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Ted McAvoy <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Excellent. So Stormy, you mentioned diamondback moth. What would be some good chemical control methods? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Stormy Sparks <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Diamondback, there’s a lot of chemistry labeled for it. We’ve had resistance to all of them and it varies field by field. That’s one of the problems with dealing with diamondback moth. And that’s why we do some of these bioassays when we have large populations where we can collect enough larvae quickly. We can bioassay and see what, not necessarily what’s going to work great, but what has most likely chance of working and what more than likely absolutely won’t work because we expose it to a fairly heavy dose. So if it doesn’t kill in the bioassay, it’s not going to kill in the field. And we do that on a field by field basis because resistance varies field by field. And a lot of that, if you really get into it, traces back to what has that population of diamondback moth been exposed to. If you’ve been spraying XYZ, In your field, XYZ is probably gonna be the one that doesn’t work. So you’re always looking for something that you haven’t used or haven’t used recently. If you look across all the populations we test, probably the product that most consistently still provides some efficacy is Proclaim. And that’s just because basically it comes down to expense. It’s expensive, it doesn’t get used as much, so the resistance isn’t as widespread. Other products can vary greatly from field to field. Radiant tends to work frequently. It can give 80% control in most of our fields, but then you’ll have one or two fields where it gives close to nothing. So it just depends on what that population’s been exposed to. You’ve got to try and find that and use that and use it sparingly. Rotate chemistries. We’ve got resistance. One of the things with resistance is once you’ve selected for resistance, if you quit using a product, if you’re lucky, the resistance will kind of revert back towards susceptibility. But because you’ve already changed the genetics of that population, it’s very easy to recreate that severe resistance. So if you can find a couple of products that work, absolutely make sure you’re rotating them. Worst thing you can do, I always tell growers, worst thing you can do with insects is find what you like and stick to it because it’s not going to work very long, particularly with diamondback moth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Intiaz Chowdhury <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A little bit of a, I guess, research question in a sense. Do you think when they develop resistance to these chemicals, these also have some fitness cost? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Stormy Sparks <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Usually, that’s what you kind of count on. Not always. the degree of the fitness cost. And if you’re not familiar with fitness cost, it’s basically a resistant insect is not as fit, is not as successful as a susceptible in the absence of the insecticide. So you’re hoping there’s a cost so that when you quit using the insecticide, the susceptible population builds up more than the resistant population. That’s what you’re counting on for resistance management. And that does occur. It occurs very readily with some insecticides. And types of resistance, not quite so readily with others. 20 years ago when we basically had carbamates, organophosphates, and pyrethroids, they did a lot of work with those. And organophosphates and carbamates, typically the you could see a shift back towards susceptibility in four to six generations. Pyrethroids was 13 to 16 generations. So it varies with the population, what that cost is. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Ted McAvoy <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So staying on the topics with insects, a lot of the county agents monitor several pests throughout the winter. Ty, can you tell us what you’re seeing with pepper weevil and reducing pepper weevil populations? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Ty Torrance <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah, so stormy showed over the past, I’m not sure how many years, at least five years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Stormy Sparks  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah, since 18. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Ty Torrance <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That we do overwinter some population of pepper weevil here, and they’re not all coming up from Florida, which is what we previously thought. But in monitoring old pepper fields, we have some sticky cards and pheromone, and we’re watching those populations from December until we set a new crop in March. And it’s actually some of the great benefits are finding out how those pepper weed will move out of the field whenever the crop is destroyed. So fields that I’m monitoring that the grower mowed the crop down and ripped up the plastic to start over within the first couple weeks of us monitoring those, populations are significantly lower than fields that still have the crop on the plastic and there’s still pods pepper pods in between the rows and still plenty of food source essentially for those weevils to maintain and continue living. And we’re catching hundreds per sticky card on some of the fields that still have a crop in the field. So it’s a huge difference it can make if the grower can destroy in a timely fashion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Stormy Sparks <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that’s true with a lot of insects, but particularly with pepper weevil because there’s no indication to diapause. So the weather slows them down. They may not be reproducing, but they’re still out there running around trying to live. So particularly when we get these warm periods, I think Ty will tell you, the catches go up because they’re still biologically active. And if they don’t have food, that’s fantastic because they’re biologically active, nothing to eat, and you just get a lot of mortality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Ted McAvoy <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So Ty, you’ve been working a lot with cover crops. You want to talk about that? And what you’re seeing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Ty Torrance <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah. When I moved from, I was in Grady County before moving to the vegetable agent position. And when I moved here, I saw a couple different growers were utilizing cover crops in the row middles of the plastic and essentially laying plastic early in the middle to end of December and beginning of January. And then either spread, broadcast, cover crop like rye, weed, or oats over the plastic and then disc it in some fashion with a rolling cultivator or a small disc to kind of push that dirt back towards the shoulder of the plastic a little bit and cover up just enough to cover up that seed. You don’t want to make a big furrow right there. But anyway, they’ve seen some significant reduction in erosion. So as far as covering up that much of the acre with plastic and water washing off that plastic under the bare dirt and out the end of the field can be a really big problem for us creating washes and stuff like that. So being able to keep the dirt there on the shoulder of the plastic on the tuck is essential. We always run into some storms in the spring and wind it’ll pick that plastic up. And it’s a large expense for growers to go back in there by hand and have to cover the plastic back up, cover the tuck back up. So the cover crop is helping maintain the position of the plastic and reduce erosion. We’re looking at, Stormy’s helping me with this. We’ve seen some really promising things with whitefly reduction in crops when we have the cover in the row middles, trying to understand that. And then also this spring, we’re looking into thrips to see if we are in any way influencing thrips pressure in a field where we had a cover in those run middles. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Ted McAvoy <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So you mentioned thrips. Stormy, maybe we could talk about this. When do thrips come in and what’s the best management strategy? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Stormy Sparks <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah, thrips are kind of interesting. They’re out there pretty much year round, but we tend to have large populations in April. And a lot of that based on David Riley’s work is because we have a lot of pine trees in South Georgia. And if you’ve not noticed, they put out a lot of pollen in early April, maybe a little earlier. And from what David Riley says is that pine pollen is large enough that it’s like a juice box for thrips. they’ll penetrate that pine pollen and it’s a very nutritious food for them. So reproduction just skyrockets when pine pollen. You can actually put thrips on a crop that they kind of like that they don’t prefer and sprinkle it with pine pollen and you get much larger populations than if they’re on that crop without the pine pollen. So when we get big pine shed and we’re not getting rains, The rains help. Rains probably cause mortality of thrips, but they’re also washing that pine falling off. So if we get, we’ve always known if we get a lot of rain in the spring, we don’t have as bad a thrips problem. But it’s probably a combination of both mortality and just removing that food source. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Ted McAvoy <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So Ty, you recently got an award. You want to toot your own horn. We always like to celebrate success around here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Ty Torrance <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, I appreciate that. Yeah, I wasn’t going to, but we can. I won the Donnie H. Morris Vegetable Extension Award. I mean, to me, that’s kind of like the MVP trophy of the vegetable world. I was very surprised and humbled to get it. I’m grateful. You have to be nominated by a grower, so that’s always good. kind of have the approval of some of your growers. So yeah, just a very, very humbling experience for me. So I really appreciate it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Stormy Sparks <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well deserved. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Intiaz Amin Chowdhury <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I agree. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Ted McAvoy <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How about we could just go around the table. Is there anything that’s kind of a hot topic that you’re really interested in or that you think is the future? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Ty Torrance <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don’t know if I know what the future is, but I’m really interested in the cover crop idea. We really have a lot to figure out still as far as how that cover in the middle affects your cash crop on the plastic. We don’t ever want to do anything that’s going to have a detrimental effect on the cash crop we’re trying to grow. But it’s always a positive to try to reduce erosion and any kind of impact we’re having. on our fields that we’re growing on because a lot of the watermelon people know this because they’re trying their best to rotate into new ground to get away from a pathogen called Fusarium. And new ground is getting harder and harder to come by. So in the vegetable world as well. So taking care of what we have and being the best stewards of it is something that I’m always interested in. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Ted McAvoy <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think on my end, I’m really interested in the precision ag, the laser weeders, transplanters, sprayers, anything that could reduce labor and make us more efficient, more productive. I think that’s the future of farming and hopefully we’ll do a lot of that work here at University of Georgia and in collaboration with technology and industry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Intiaz Chowdhury <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Make sure they’re practical. for large scale, and on the nematode side, there has been some work with these new technologies, microwave-based systems, but working towards making them practical for our growers, that’s the priority with that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Stormy Sparks <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Entomologically speaking, probably one of the more severe issues we’re facing right now. It’s not new as far as being insecticide resistance. I’ve been dealing with that since the first job I ever had was in ’88, ’89. I worked with diamondback moth resistance. Wow. Which we’re still doing. But the corn earworm pyrethroid resistance is a huge threat. particularly to sweet corn production throughout the southeast right now, because we do have to spray sweet corn a lot. You need a relatively cheap product to be able to spray as much as we do. And that pyrethroid resistance in corn earworm is severe from what we’ve seen. We’re going to continue monitoring it. And then in combination with that, we’re seeing the indications of the beginnings of resistance to core, group 28s. as well. And if you take out the pyrethroids, basically you’ve got Lanate, Radiant, and Coragen, or products that have one of those three in it. And if you try to take out Coragen out of that system as well, you just simply can’t spray enough. It’s bad enough you have to spray those more expensive products, but if you take out Coragen also, you probably can’t spray enough to produce a clean crop. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Ty Torrance <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So BT sweet corn is not widely accepted by the market. Do you think kind of a push of education and getting into BT sweet corn, do you think that could fix that problem or you don’t think it’s enough? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Stormy Sparks <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s not enough at this point, to be honest. When it first came out, it was very effective. The single gene was good. The single gene that just has one cryoprotein in it now looks like a non-BT. There’s that much resistance in the population in corn earworm. If you look at the stack cry proteins, you’re maybe getting 60% control, which is not adequate most of the time. If you look at something that’s got the VIP protein in it, those are phenomenal. You produce very large, very beautiful ears, but unfortunately they’re not the quality of sweet corn that I think the market would demand. They’re just not in varieties that produce that nice sweet flavor. They’re very crunchy, very beautiful. They chew great, but they just don’t have the flavor. And again, for whatever reason, South Georgia markets will not accept BT, the GMO sweet corns. I made that statement several years ago in South Carolina at a meeting and the grower that was presenting immediately after me got up and said, I grow 400 acres of GMO sweet corn every year and have never had a problem selling it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ty Torrance <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just never told anybody. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Stormy Sparks <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don’t know if he never told anybody or it’s just for whatever reason that market accepts it. But our market does not accept it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Intiaz Chowdhury <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was curious, how often do you see New insects or insects in Georgia, I mean, and how often you see them developing, the ones we have developing resistance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Stormy Sparks <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We get new insects or the threat of new insects constantly. We’re not as bad as Florida. Florida gets new stuff. They might get two or three new species a year, but they’re going to have at least something new every year. We’re always keeping an eye on what’s moving up from Florida because of all those new things. We’ve got a couple of pests that potentially we have detected here, but they’re not of a concern yet, but we always keep an eye on that. As far as resistance is concerned, there’s certain species that obviously are much more prone to resistance than others. Diamondback moth, as soon as we get a new product, you start monitoring for resistance. There’s one product we got, I actually documented field level failures a week before it was registered. But most you’re looking at two years. I would say in the last 10, 15 years, we get a new product that’s very good on diamondback moth. It’s good for about a year and a half, two years, and then we tend to burn it up because it’s It’s not like it’s coming in to where you’ve got six products that work well. You’ve got five products that work okay and then you put in a new one that’s great. It gets a lot of pressure put on that new product. You know, if we brought 8 new products to the market at once, we could really do some rotations and delay that resistance. But when you’ve got that pressure on a single product, it just doesn’t seem to, it doesn’t last that long with that species. Same products on other caterpillar pests, you don’t have that problem. We imported cabbage worm, we probably spray imported cabbage worm now more than we did 10 years ago, and we don’t have anywhere near the kind of resistance we do with diamondback. So it varies a lot by species. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Intiaz Chowdhury <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah, it’s interesting because with nematodes, we don’t see resistance to nematocytes yet. We haven’t seen any But we did find, recently we found a few new species of root knot nematode in Georgia, guava root knot nematode, peach root knot nematode and Texas root knot nematode. Now guava root knot nematode is a little bit concerning because it’s becoming widespread in North Carolina and Florida and it does have more reproduction than what we have here, the southern root not limited, and it has less sensitivity to nematicide. Some of our work has shown that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Stormy Sparks <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So it’s concerned with our host range. Very wide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Intiaz Chowdhury <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Very wide house range. But the good news is it’s not widespread yet. It’s just in two fields in Georgia. I looked at the agronomic fields as well. It’s not there yet. But what that made me realize is it’s moving with transplants and from nurseries. And it’s very important to get transplants from reputable sources or people you know. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Ted McAvoy <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We’re at the 30 minute mark, so I think we’ll wrap this up. Well, one, I hope that everyone’s learned something and hopefully found it engaging. They say that you learn by doing and, uh, Stormy and I learned what a podcast is because we thought we were going to be on AM radio. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Intiaz Chowdhury <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bye everyone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Ted McAvoy <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks for tuning in. Catch you next time. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Transcript from UGA Vegetables on Apple Podcast to listen to the Episode visit https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/uga-vegetables-podcast-episode-1\/id1804699266?i=1000700964403; UGA Vegetables Podcast Episode 1 features Dr. Stormy Sparks (Vegetable Entomologist) and Ty Torrance (UGA Multi-County Vegetable Extension Agent) to discuss vegetable insect pests, lifecycle and management, top production issues, and interesting research being conducted at the University of Georgia.\u00a0 By: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":931,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/vegpath\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/vegpath\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/vegpath\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/vegpath\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/931"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/vegpath\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=886"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/vegpath\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":887,"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/vegpath\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886\/revisions\/887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/vegpath\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/vegpath\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.caes.uga.edu\/vegpath\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}