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Ping Yu: Hello everyone, welcome to the
Blooms and Beyond podcast, a podcast that
uncovers plant history, culture, and
management through the lens of science.

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Ping Yu: I'm your host, Ping. How's everyone
doing today? I'm doing great because I have
one of my colleagues here, Dr. Erich Schoeller,
today joining me to talk about integrated
pest management. Along the way, we are also
going to talk about his favorite plant and
pest, and of course, some wonderful stories
behind the scenes. So I don't want to steal
any more thunder from our speaker today.
Without further ado, here is my conversation
with Dr. Erich Schoeller. I hope you enjoy it.

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Ping Yu: Hello, Dr. Erich Schoeller.
Welcome to the podcast. So before we get
started with all this wonderful stuff that
we're going to talk about today, can you
tell us a little bit about who you are
and what you do?

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Erich Schoeller: Sure. Thank you for the
invitation. It's great to be here and talk
to you today a little bit about IPM.

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Erich Schoeller: So my name is Erich Schoeller.
I'm an assistant professor at the University
of Georgia in the Department of Entomology.

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Erich Schoeller: And my responsibilities are
controlled environment agriculture,
integrated pest management.

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Erich Schoeller: And when we say controlled
environment agriculture, what we're referring
to is crops that are grown under a protected
structure, be it high tunnels, greenhouses,
or vertical farms.

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Ping Yu: So there is a fine line with
controlled environment and agriculture.

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Ping Yu: We can talk about this a little
bit more, but can you tell us, is that
something you always wanted to do when
you grew up, or is it just something you
found through your education or your training
or your internships along the way that made
you end up in horticulture or in
entomology specifically?

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Erich Schoeller: I've actually had a pretty
meandering career trajectory in my life.
When I first entered undergrad, I actually
entered pharmacy school because I wanted
to be a pharmacist. Quickly learned that
I did not like chemistry.

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Erich Schoeller: I changed to a biology degree.

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Erich Schoeller: For the first couple of
years of my undergrad, I was very
interested in marine biology.

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Erich Schoeller: After I did like a
three-week camp in the Bahamas for marine
biology, I quickly learned I hated
swimming all day.

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Erich Schoeller: So I wanted to do something
land-based and did more of an ecology-focused
undergrad.

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Erich Schoeller: After doing my bachelor's
degree, I went to Louisiana State University,
where I was in the Department of
Entomology there.

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Erich Schoeller: And for a master's, I worked
in forestry, dealing with pests that affect
the timber industry, realizing that
I did not like it.

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Erich Schoeller: Having to cut down trees
and work in forests around poisonous snakes
and plants.

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Erich Schoeller: Horribly high temperatures.
I needed something a little more moderate
in terms of what I physically was doing.
For my PhD, I was at the University of
California, Riverside, and there I started
doing things that were more similar to what
I'm currently doing, which is urban or
peri-urban pest management. And there I did
biological control of insects that were
infesting landscape ornamentals.

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Erich Schoeller: And then finally, for my
postdoc at University of Florida, that's
when I really started doing strictly
horticultural production indoors, just what
I continue on into my current position.

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Ping Yu: Wow, it's amazing to see like...

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Ping Yu: from pharmacy to forestry all the
way to ornamental, like, your trajectory
really kind of gives us a hint of how
amazing the path to horticulture can be
because I have met so many people throughout
the years and people keep telling me how
different their backgrounds are, but they
all end up in horticulture. So you are
definitely just showing us the case, but
either from pharmacy, forestry, or ended
up in horticulture, all dealing with
plants, right?

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Ping Yu: So, were you growing up with plants
or were you like a little boy loving the
little pests while you grew up?

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Erich Schoeller: Yeah, so I'm grateful that
I had a family that really supported nature
and my interest in nature.

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Erich Schoeller: From a very young age,
I grew up in rural sort of surroundings,
always out in the country.

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Erich Schoeller: Many acres of land, sometimes
forested, sometimes not. But from an early
age, I was just outside basically from dawn
to dusk and playing in different natural
habitats. And I was always just so interested
in the insects that were in those habitats.
Some of our properties, we had 10, 30, 40
acres, and I would just run through the
fields with a sweep net and look and see
kind of the things that I was catching in
my net as a kid.

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Erich Schoeller: And so I made insect
collections from a very early age
and stopped that for a while.

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Erich Schoeller: But, you know, I had always
been very interested in insects from as
early as I can remember.

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Erich Schoeller: And on the plant side,
my mom always had beautiful gardens.

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Erich Schoeller: She was a stay-at-home mom,
so she had a lot of extra time.

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Erich Schoeller: And she would spend that
time doing gardening and landscaping.

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Erich Schoeller: And I would go out there
and help her plant.

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Erich Schoeller: Various things. So between
plants and insects, so that's a marriage
of what I currently do.

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Ping Yu: That's perfect. Well, I feel like
a lot of people, if they grow up with plants
or they have early exposure to nature, it
can give people the potential passion for
plants when they grow up.

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Ping Yu: That's how I feel like that.

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Ping Yu: So in terms of the plant and pest,
can you tell us what's your favorite insect
and give us the reason why?

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Ping Yu: Like, as I am a plant person, I can
give you a list of plants that I love, but
not specifically for pests.

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Erich Schoeller: Right. So being from
Wisconsin, I grew up in an area that was
pretty heavy in apple production.

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Erich Schoeller: And I remember going
in the fall to pick apples.

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Erich Schoeller: And one of the things that
I would always see is these fruit flies
that were on the apples.

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Erich Schoeller: And they were always very
beautiful with brightly colored wings
and interesting patterns.

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Erich Schoeller: And today I know that
those are tephritid fruit flies.

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Erich Schoeller: Every species is bright
and colorful and has interesting
coloration patterns.

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Erich Schoeller: You know, there's some
really nasty ones out there like
Mediterranean fruit fly, which is always
something the USDA is trying to prevent
from entering the U.S.

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Erich Schoeller: And...

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Erich Schoeller: And there's other ones like
the olive fruit fly, which is already in the
U.S. and devastating the California
olive production.

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Erich Schoeller: They have really interesting
behaviors and they tend to hang around
large fruits.

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Erich Schoeller: So they're pretty conspicuous.

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Erich Schoeller: That's something that stands
out to me that I remember very young.

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Ping Yu: Okay, so basically you kind of
carried your passion for insects from your
childhood all the way till now.

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Ping Yu: What is your favorite plant?

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Erich Schoeller: So that would be lilacs.

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Erich Schoeller: And the reason for that is
my grandmother had a patio and it was
completely surrounded by lilacs.

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Erich Schoeller: I can just remember how
that smelled in the spring.

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Erich Schoeller: It was amazing and that
was a very special memory for me.

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Ping Yu: So do you know, as a plant person,
I'd like to throw out some information
about lilac.

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Ping Yu: The scientific name of lilac, it's
actually named after a Greek nymph, Syringa.

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Ping Yu: So basically the story behind lilac
or Syringa is because this nymph is trying
to escape from the god named Pan, who is
pursuing her according to the story, and
then to escape from his pursuing, she turned
herself into a lilac shrub. And then the
god found the shrubs and used its hollow
stems to make the first pan pipe,
the pan flute.

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Ping Yu: Because a lot of times lilac is the
first flowering or blooming in the spring,
it also represents the arrival of spring
and new life and also the first emotion
of love.

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Ping Yu: Well, at least in Europe
and England.

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Ping Yu: So I guess this would be some
conversation you might want to share
with your mom.

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Ping Yu: I think she might be interested
in romantic or cultural and historical
information like this.

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Ping Yu: Well, every time we go out and see
a plant, you're like, "Oh, it's a yellow
plant.

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Ping Yu: It's a red color flower and all
that." But there's a lot of information
and stories.

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Ping Yu: Behind the plant itself. So that's
one of the things that I want to share with
you all today. If you have a favorite plant,
Google it or do a little bit more research
on that and you'll find a lot more meaning
behind the plant itself. And I don't know
if anyone out there has read the book, it's
called Lilac Girls. And if you haven't, do it
because that's one of the remarkable books
that I read this year.

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Ping Yu: The lilac as a plant is set in the
front garden of the house where the Lilac
Girls story takes place.

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Ping Yu: Of course the book doesn't have to
do with the lilac plant itself. It's just
something I would recommend you to read.

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Ping Yu: Anyhow, back to the point with our
main topic today. In agriculture or in
academia, there are a lot of abbreviations
of certain terms that we normally use, but
maybe other people, when they first get
introduced to some of those abbreviations
we're using...

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Ping Yu: They may not know what it is.

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Ping Yu: So can you tell us, well,
what is IPM?

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Ping Yu: And just to give a brief
introduction of IPM.

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Erich Schoeller: Sure. So IPM stands for
Integrated Pest Management.

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Erich Schoeller: A lot of times we now use
IPPM, which is Integrated Pest and Pathogen
Management. But specifically for my career,
I focus on pests. So IPM is basically a
science-based decision support system, which
essentially aims to reduce the use of plant
protection products to levels that are
economically sustainable and that are safe
for the environment and human health. IPM
is sort of a group of different tactics
that we try to utilize as a whole to create
a program, we call that an IPM program, that
will ultimately help us achieve that goal
of relying less on broad spectrum
insecticides, for example.

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Ping Yu: And for a lot of people, when we
talk about IPM, the P, the pest, people
would tend to interpret it as pests.

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Ping Yu: It's kind of narrowed down to
pests only, but can you give us a definition
of the pest?

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Ping Yu: What is the pest we're
referring to here?

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Erich Schoeller: Sure.

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Erich Schoeller: So when I typically
talk about pests,

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Erich Schoeller: I'm referring to arthropod
pests, which are both insects and mites,
which are arachnids.

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Erich Schoeller: Those are what my focus is
on, but at the same time, when you're
managing pests, you're often also managing
diseases because insects vector plant
pathogens, and you're trying to kill two
birds with one stone in that case to prevent
plant diseases, and any sort of damage
that's actually due to the insects
themselves feeding on those plants.

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Erich Schoeller: And simply put, a pest is
something that you don't want around that's
causing you some sort of economic damage
to your crop.

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Ping Yu: So under that umbrella, I would say
this pest refers to anything that people
don't want.

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Ping Yu: Does that also include weeds
in that regard?

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Erich Schoeller: Yes, absolutely.

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Erich Schoeller: Weeds are definitely pests.

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Erich Schoeller: They're unwanted organisms
and their presence can often lead to reduced
yields in your crop depending on where they
are, particularly in field crops where
they're directly in the soil with your crop
competing for those resources.
But even in a greenhouse...

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Erich Schoeller: They can be pests because
they can harbor unwanted insects on them
that might not be in there if you only
have the crop.

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Erich Schoeller: And they could also be
competing for light in your greenhouse
as well.

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Ping Yu: Yeah, I think that's one of the
things a lot of times people are just like,
oh, those are just weeds.

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Ping Yu: They're only going to compete for
the nutrients and water for the plants.

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Ping Yu: But in the meantime, they're also
providing the habitats for those pests to
get into the greenhouse or get into your
crop, right? I know IPM involves a lot of
steps. It's not an easy task for people to
adapt. Can you tell us a little bit more
about why people need to adapt to IPM
practices in their production?

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Erich Schoeller: Right. So as I mentioned,
the ultimate goal is to enhance
sustainability and reduce risks from pests.

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Erich Schoeller: And you're right, there's
a lot of pros and cons associated with IPM.

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Erich Schoeller: And I can go through both
those pros and cons if you like.

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Erich Schoeller: One of the pros of IPM is
that we're ultimately trying to use less
pesticides, right?

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Erich Schoeller: Pesticides have a couple
of different categories.

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Erich Schoeller: I'll break those down
into biorational pesticides,

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Erich Schoeller: targeted pesticides, and
broad spectrum pesticides.

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Erich Schoeller: The ones that we're mostly
concerned about are those synthetic broad
spectrum insecticides because those really
can damage the environment and have much
higher risk to human health.

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Erich Schoeller: Everything we're doing is
ultimately trying to lower that.

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Erich Schoeller: And the use of pesticides
themselves, they can cause complications.

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Erich Schoeller: One of the problems with
using pesticides is it damages soil health.

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Erich Schoeller: If you go to any grower
meetings or speak with growers, one of the
really hot topics these days is soil health
and beneficial microorganisms.

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Erich Schoeller: Often the things that we're
either drenching into our pot media or
spraying on a plant which leads into the
soil is killing those microbes and denying
the plant anything that you might benefit
from that, right?

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Erich Schoeller: So another thing you
probably hear about is pesticide resistance.
And when we use chemical pesticides over
and over again, insects reproduce
extremely rapidly.

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Erich Schoeller: Often there's hundreds of
thousands of individuals that can produce
over sometimes 10 to 12 generations a year,
depending on how warm the climate is.

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Erich Schoeller: That just allows for very
rapid evolving of resistance to different
active ingredients that are in pesticides.

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Erich Schoeller: Over-reliance on those
active ingredients can breed resistance,
which can eliminate anything that's
effective there for controlling pests.

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Ping Yu: I'm glad that you mentioned about
the development of pest resistance to some
of the chemicals that they're spraying for
over and over again.

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Ping Yu: So basically, if people want to
slow down the process of resistance
development, what kind of things that you
would recommend them doing?

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Ping Yu: Right.

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Erich Schoeller: Sure. Assuming that we're
at the point we actually have to use these
chemicals, one of the primary tactics that
we utilize to prevent insects developing
resistance to these is through rotating
products, right?

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Erich Schoeller: So there's dozens of
different products that are effective
against a particular pest, and often these
chemical companies are developing these
products directly...

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Erich Schoeller: In ways that they affect
the pests in different ways, like either
chemically or interacts with a certain
system function.

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Erich Schoeller: You know, it can destroy
the gut. It can prevent them from feeding.
It can be a nerve agent, etc.

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Erich Schoeller: So there's a group called
the Insecticide Resistance Action Committee,
or also known as IRAC.

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Erich Schoeller: And they categorize all the
different pesticides based on their mode of
action and how they're killing that pest or
affecting that pest's physiology.

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Erich Schoeller: And you can look either on
the pesticide label, often it will say what
mode of action that pesticide is, or you
can go online and see what it is.

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Erich Schoeller: And you should always try
to use, if you're using multiple products,
rotating those products with different
modes of action.

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Erich Schoeller: And the other thing is
always use maximum label rates if possible,
because if you use something that's too
weak, that allows more of the population
to survive.

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Erich Schoeller: And when more of that
population survives, there's a higher
chance that they contain a gene that
can develop resistance there.

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Ping Yu: Now, the disciplines involved with
IPM would be horticulture, entomology,
plant pathology, and weed science.

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Ping Yu: But what are the specific tactics
that are involved in IPM?

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Erich Schoeller: Sure. I like to think of
IPM as sort of the food pyramid that
we all learned.

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Erich Schoeller: So looking at the pyramid,
at the base of that pyramid...

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Erich Schoeller: is prevention tactics.

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Erich Schoeller: They often say prevention
is the best medicine, right?

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Erich Schoeller: It helps you deal with
problems before they even arise, which will
ultimately save you money, not having to
deal with the problems in the first place.

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Erich Schoeller: Things like that can
involve crop rotation.

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Erich Schoeller: In the case of greenhouses,
that's planting different things at
different times of the year.

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Erich Schoeller: You don't always have the
same crop in the same greenhouse all the
time because a certain crop might be
suitable for a particular pest.

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Erich Schoeller: And if it's always there,
their population can continually build up.

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Erich Schoeller: But if you remove that crop
and they don't have access to it, then
it'll eventually die out and the greenhouse
will clean out of that pest.

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Erich Schoeller: Using resistant varieties...

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Erich Schoeller: So in ornamentals and
vegetables, the plant breeders spend a lot
of time looking at how certain varieties
are susceptible to different pest feeding
and whether or not they get less or
more damage.

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Erich Schoeller: So using varieties that are
known to be resistant against something
that you have a problem with frequently
can save you time.

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Erich Schoeller: They either don't get
damaged at all or they get damaged less to
the point that the damage is below any
threshold...

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Erich Schoeller: you actually have
to treat for.

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Erich Schoeller: And then, so that's the
base, is prevention.

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Erich Schoeller: The next step up from that
is detection tactics.

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Erich Schoeller: So after we've tried to
prevent things, now we need to be monitoring
for those problems to make sure that we
catch them really early on before they
become a problem and we start experiencing
crop losses. For insects, that can involve
a lot of things, but they generally fall
under the same concept, what we call
scouting. So we need to be out scouting
the crop for issues.

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Erich Schoeller: Generally that involves
walking through the crop and looking at it
pretty thoroughly and then taking notes on
the issues we're seeing, where those issues
are in the facility, when they typically
occur throughout the year.

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Erich Schoeller: You can have some sort of
level of predictability when problems are
going to happen, so you can be extra
attentive to that.

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Erich Schoeller: And then we can use, so
that's kind of active scouting.

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Erich Schoeller: We can also use passive
scouting methods such as insect sticky traps
that we would hang in a greenhouse that are
attractive visually to these insects. They're
going to fly to this trap, get caught, and
we can look at these weekly and see if
we're seeing any individuals.

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Erich Schoeller: That's sort of
a passive method.

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Erich Schoeller: So active scouting and
passive scouting are key detection methods.

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Erich Schoeller: So now let's pretend that
our prevention and our detection methods
have failed.

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Erich Schoeller: We now have pests that
we have to deal with.

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Erich Schoeller: Now we fall into the
control section...

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Erich Schoeller: of IPM. And within the
control section, that broadly falls into
three categories: cultural control and
mechanical control, biological control, and
then chemical control, right? So cultural
and mechanical control is things like
sanitation, pruning, just things that humans
are involved in that can be active measures
of prevention.

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Erich Schoeller: So not going into the
greenhouse wearing your street clothes, for
example, wearing gloves to handle crops and
then throwing those gloves out so you're
not spreading pests and disease.

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Erich Schoeller: So those are some examples
of cultural control and mechanical control.

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Erich Schoeller: Biological control, which
we'll talk about a little bit more in depth,
is using living organisms to control pests.
And we've already sort of touched on
chemical control. And I mentioned broad
spectrum insecticides, targeted insecticides,
and then sort of biorational insecticides
within there.

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Erich Schoeller: So that's the category
we're ultimately trying not to have to
get to.

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Ping Yu: Well, thank you for the very
thorough description or explanation
of the IPM.

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Ping Yu: You basically kind of drew the big
picture for us of the pyramid, which has
three layers, and also kind of gave us an
idea of some of the steps that if people
want to adapt to IPM practices. First, you
need the prevention, which is the first
layer.

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Ping Yu: You want to start with clean
materials and know how to grow good plants
in the right place.

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Ping Yu: And then from there, we go up
to the second layer, which is detection.

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Ping Yu: So that's when you have to
constantly go look and check your plants
just to make sure your plants are
doing well.

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Ping Yu: If you detect any potential
symptoms of an issue, react, take
actions early.

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Ping Yu: And then the last one would be
the control part, the...

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Ping Yu: third layer of the pyramid, that's
when you have to make a decision to control
the pest.

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Ping Yu: Along that way, we have three
different control methods, including
cultural control, biological control, and
chemical control. Well, chemical control,
we kind of basically already touched on,
just using pesticides and insecticides.

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Ping Yu: Cultural control is kind of similar
to the prevention part where you use
tactics to help reduce the spread of the
pest or the damage of the pest.

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Ping Yu: But do you categorize banker plants
and trap plants as cultural control or is
it more like biological control?

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Ping Yu: And what are banker plants and trap
crops and how do they work so that we can
kind of draw the line of if this belongs to
cultural practice or biological control
practice.

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Erich Schoeller: Right. So you mentioned
banker plants and trap crops.

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Erich Schoeller: I should first define what
that means for our listeners.

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Erich Schoeller: So a banker plant is
typically a non-crop plant...

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Erich Schoeller: that you're placing either
within the crop or adjacent to the crop.

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Erich Schoeller: And that banker plant is
targeting what we call either natural
enemies or biological control agents.

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Erich Schoeller: And those are organisms
that we're releasing into the crop to help
control the pest.

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Erich Schoeller: And those sort of fall
into a couple broad categories.

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Erich Schoeller: Predators, which are, you
know, preying on the pest; parasitoids or
parasites, which kill the pests by laying
their eggs inside them, and then their
young eat the inside of the pest.

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Erich Schoeller: And then things like
entomopathogenic fungi and entomopathogenic
nematodes are kind of a mix...

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Erich Schoeller: between predator and
parasite. So the banker plants are targeting
the pests through the natural enemies.

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Erich Schoeller: On the other hand, trap
crops, so those are a crop or a plant that
you're putting into the crop.

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Erich Schoeller: It's not the same thing as
the crop, but they're typically a plant
that is more attractive to the pests than
the actual crop is. The theory there is that
they're going to prefer being on that plant
instead of the crop.

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Erich Schoeller: So that is a plant that's
interacting with the pest directly.

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Erich Schoeller: So you asked me whether or
not I thought that was more of a cultural
control tactic or a biological control
tactic.

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Erich Schoeller: I feel it depends on if
it's the trap crop or a banker plant.

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Erich Schoeller: Trap crop, I feel, is much
more of a cultural control tactic.

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Erich Schoeller: A banker plant is more of
a biological control tactic.

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Erich Schoeller: And an example of a trap
crop we might use would be sweet alyssum.

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Erich Schoeller: An example of a pest that
likes thrips. So we have thrips in your
impatiens, for example. They're going to
want to be in your trap crop more than they
are in your impatiens. And once they're in
the trap crop, you can either spray that
trap crop with insecticides so you're not
spraying the crop itself, or you can
physically take that trap crop out and
destroy it.

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Erich Schoeller: Either through burning it
or mulching it.

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Ping Yu: So if I understand it right, so
I'm just giving a real live example of
the trap plants.

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Ping Yu: Basically, for instance, if you
want to protect your other plants from deer
in your front yard, and I know there are a
lot of deer-loving plants out there, pansy
is one of them. So for instance, let's say
if you want to protect your eggplant from
deer and you plant the outside circle of
pansy plants so that the deer will chew on
the pansy plants instead of the eggplant,
so in that way you kind of protect your
eggplant from being eaten by the deer.
Am I understanding it right?

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Erich Schoeller: That analogy is correct.

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Ping Yu: Can you give us a little bit
more information on that?

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Ping Yu: In ornamentals, we're dealing with
thousands of different plants.

192
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Ping Yu: What are the challenges for
ornamental crops and for growers to
use IPM?

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Erich Schoeller: Right. So I guess I'll
start out with talking about specific
challenges associated with ornamental IPM.

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Erich Schoeller: At the same time, you know,
I talked about the pros of IPM, but I'll
also touch on some of the cons I didn't
get to mention.

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Erich Schoeller: So ornamental crop
production, you can think of that as crops
that are either grown in a nursery
setting or...

196
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Erich Schoeller: Or those that are grown in
a greenhouse. They're mainly grown for
aesthetic purposes, right?

197
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Erich Schoeller: We're looking for something
attractive for our landscape or our house
that is pretty.

198
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Erich Schoeller: So floriculture and nursery
products are very susceptible to having
their aesthetic value damaged by pests.

199
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Erich Schoeller: So there's a very low
tolerance for pests in ornamentals that we
might not have such a low tolerance level
in another crop.

200
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Erich Schoeller: Where we don't care about
how they look, right? So people that are
growing ornamentals might have to use much
stronger tactics to keep those pest levels
down to such low levels that they're not
damaging how that plant looks, right?

201
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Erich Schoeller: The other thing is, so
imagine you're going to your local nursery,
right?

202
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Erich Schoeller: As soon as you walk into
the nursery center, you're bombarded with
hundreds of different plants.

203
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Erich Schoeller: Unlike field production,
which might be a monoculture, meaning that
there's just one crop grown over a huge
amount of acreage, right?

204
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Erich Schoeller: In ornamental or greenhouse
production, you have a ton of different
plants grown in a very small space.

205
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Erich Schoeller: And that just
creates complexity.

206
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Erich Schoeller: And so you might have to
use many different tactics in that very
small space.

207
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Erich Schoeller: And it can get
complicated very fast.

208
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Erich Schoeller: You can have a lot of
different pests in a small area, which
requires a lot of different management
tactics in a small area.

209
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Erich Schoeller: And finally, this isn't
necessarily for nurseries, but for
greenhouses. These are semi-closed
facilities, right?

210
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Erich Schoeller: They are structures that
are more difficult for insects to pass
through than they would be in an
open environment.

211
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Erich Schoeller: For biological control,
we're typically releasing those organisms
into the greenhouse, and they're feeding
on that pest population.

212
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Erich Schoeller: If it's a good natural
enemy, they're going to reduce that pest
population to very low levels.

213
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Erich Schoeller: What happens when a
predator reduces their prey to low levels?

214
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Erich Schoeller: They typically either have
to migrate to find another place that has
prey or they're going to starve.

215
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Erich Schoeller: And inside a greenhouse
facility, they don't really have the
opportunity to go find more food.

216
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Erich Schoeller: So oftentimes the natural
enemies we're using in those facilities,
their populations collapse, and the growers
are going to have to buy those products
over and over again every time that they
wipe out the pests, which can be a little
bit expensive.

217
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Erich Schoeller: So, I mentioned I wanted
to also talk about some of the cons of IPM.

218
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Erich Schoeller: Yeah.

219
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Erich Schoeller: So that's one of the things
is it can be expensive.

220
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Erich Schoeller: IPM versus chemical
control measures.

221
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Erich Schoeller: Some studies have found
that it can cost as little as 20% more
than traditional pest management.

222
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Erich Schoeller: So, often IPM is more
expensive than typical insecticide use.

223
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Erich Schoeller: Yeah.

224
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Erich Schoeller: The IPM pyramid.

225
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Erich Schoeller: Okay.

226
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Erich Schoeller: It is technically
complex, right?

227
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Erich Schoeller: And it's difficult
to implement.

228
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Erich Schoeller: And a grower is constantly
going to have to learn and spend time
learning about new methods that might be
a better solution...

229
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Erich Schoeller: tactic to use in their IPM
program. So it's much more hands-on and
involved than just spraying a broad
spectrum insecticide. And the other thing
we kind of touched on is for an IPM program
you have to monitor it much more frequently
to make sure it's working than you would
have to if you're just spraying pesticides.

230
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Ping Yu: Yeah, I agree with that.

231
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Ping Yu: But one of the things that I want
to put out there is, well, you would
typically think about, oh, IPM might be a
little bit more expensive, but it really
depends on the lifespan or the time period
that you're evaluating the program.

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Ping Yu: So I think it's just a matter of
time, especially with the challenges we're
facing in terms of pesticide resistance
development and then the increasing concern
with environmental leaching and pesticide
contamination and all that.

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Ping Yu: That's another reason why we're
trying to, hopefully people are going to
adapt to IPM a little bit more.

234
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Ping Yu: Again, you have to kind of do the
math and say if you are going to buy a
biocontrol agent and use it to manage three
different hard-to-control pests for your
operation.

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Ping Yu: And you kind of have to do the math
and say, "Okay, this is how much I put in
to buy the biological control agent, and
this is how much I can save" from the
damage caused by the pest I'm going to
control with that. And also do the math
with if you're going to just spray the
chemical and then just do a comparison,
then make the decision of which one you
would choose. And oftentimes, people, based
on the conversations that I had with a lot
of different growers, oftentimes they find
the biological control agent will give them
better control effects economically in the
long run. So back to the biocontrol, I know
that you have done a lot of research on
biocontrol, especially here at UGA. In your
lab, you are primarily working on
biocontrol. Can you give us one or two
examples of the biocontrol for specific
pests that your lab has worked on?

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Erich Schoeller: Sure. I'll use two pests as
an example, just because they have a variety
of different natural enemies available for
them. And they're extremely important pests
in ornamental production.

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Erich Schoeller: The first is the sweet
potato whitefly. The scientific name is
*Bemisia tabaci*. It's a really devastating
pest of both field production and
ornamentals.

238
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Erich Schoeller: It's an insect that damages
plants by feeding on the sap of the plant.

239
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Erich Schoeller: We have a lot of different
options to control that pest with
biological control.

240
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Erich Schoeller: So the first things that
were really developed for that pest were
back in the early 1920s, and that was the
parasitoid wasp called *Encarsia formosa*.

241
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Erich Schoeller: Parasitoid wasps
essentially function by walking across
the leaf.

242
00:32:50,360 --> 00:33:04,860
Erich Schoeller: They encounter the pest,
and then they basically sting that pest and
lay an egg inside of it, and then their
young kills that individual pest as it
grows into an adult, and then the adult
emerges from the body of that pest
when it's time.

243
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Erich Schoeller: There's a variety of
different parasitoid wasps that are
available.

244
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Erich Schoeller: I mentioned
*Encarsia formosa*.

245
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Erich Schoeller: Other ones that are really
good are *Eretmocerus* species.

246
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Erich Schoeller: Both of those are
commercially available for growers to use.

247
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Erich Schoeller: We typically recommend that
they use both *Eretmocerus* and *Encarsia*
because whenever whitefly is present in the
greenhouse, you typically have a couple
different species and those two parasitoids
work better on some whiteflies and worse on
the others.

248
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Erich Schoeller: So most of the time the
commercial suppliers give you a mix of
those.

249
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Erich Schoeller: So in addition to
parasitoids, we also have predators
for those.

250
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Erich Schoeller: And for whiteflies, we have
predatory beetles in the family
Coccinellidae.

251
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Erich Schoeller: And the beetles that work
really well for those are specialists,
meaning that they really only feed on
whiteflies and not other types of insects.

252
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Erich Schoeller: That particular group of
beetles is in the genus *Delphastus*.

253
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Erich Schoeller: And the species that's
commercially available for whiteflies is
called *Delphastus catalinae*.

254
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Erich Schoeller: Here in the South, we also
have native species that work even better
that might find their way into your
greenhouse if they're around.

255
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Erich Schoeller: And then we also have
predatory bugs such as *Orius insidiosus*
that will feed on the whiteflies. So
parasitoids and predators are the two main
groups we have for whiteflies. Now for
thrips, a problem globally as well as in
the U.S. is western flower thrips,
*Frankliniella occidentalis*, and that is a
really nasty thrips that devastates
ornamentals. For that we have a large
variety of natural enemies as well, but
those all fall really within the predator
category. There's not really parasitoids
available for that, but we have, like I
mentioned, the predatory bugs. *Orius* work
really well on those. Unlike the whiteflies,
we also have predatory mites, which are
little mites that feed on other insects.

256
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Erich Schoeller: The ones that work really
well for that, for example, would be
*Amblyseius swirskii*, an example of a
species that's commercially available
for thrips.

257
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Ping Yu: Okay, thank you for the information
just for those two pests.

258
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Ping Yu: So there's one thing that I was
thinking maybe some other people are also
interested in.

259
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Ping Yu: For chemical applications, a lot of
people would go look for broad spectrum
chemicals, which means one chemical can be
effective to control many different pest
issues, right?

260
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Ping Yu: Are there any commercially
available biocontrol agents that would be
considered broad spectrum, which means one
biocontrol agent can help protect or
control many different pests in their
production?

261
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Erich Schoeller: Not in the sense that
they're something that controls everything,
but we have options that control a lot.

262
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Erich Schoeller: And I mentioned some of
those.

263
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Erich Schoeller: *Swirskii*, for example,
is going to feed on a variety of different
thrips, a variety of different whiteflies,
but it's also going to feed on spider mites,
for example, which we didn't touch on.

264
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Erich Schoeller: It's a generalist.

265
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Ping Yu: Only this one?

266
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Ping Yu: So it's different, like the
chemical that we're using, where one
chemical has...

267
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Ping Yu: Well, I wouldn't say everything,
but a big range of different pests, right?

268
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Ping Yu: So basically, in the biocontrol
world, we only have one of those that has
potential to control various pests?

269
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Erich Schoeller: No, I kind of touched
on one I already mentioned.

270
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Erich Schoeller: And another one would be
*Orius*, which will feed on a whole bunch
of things as well.

271
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Erich Schoeller: But yeah, between the mites
and the predatory bugs, those are our most
generalist...

272
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Erich Schoeller: natural enemies we have,
but those will not really help us with
mealybugs, for example. They won't help us
with scales. They won't help us with fungus
gnats. So there's a bunch of pests still
that we have to have other options for that
they won't take care of for us. So yeah,
there's no magic bullet that deals with
every single pest out there.

273
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Ping Yu: Oh, okay.

274
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Ping Yu: So I guess that's another reason
why we need IPM, which involves a lot of
different tactics to control those pests
because only certain pests can be managed
by one set of tactics. So as an IPM
specialist or entomologist, can you give us
some suggestions on how to develop a
successful IPM program?

275
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Erich Schoeller: Sure. Before I answer that
question, I wanted to touch on the other
end of the spectrum, which you asked about
generalists. But on the specialist side, we
have tons of options there. And often we
use specialist biocontrol agents because
specialists often are more effective than
generalists for trying to control a very
specific pest.

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Erich Schoeller: So we might not have a
natural enemy that controls everything, but
we do have natural enemies that control one
thing and they do it very well.

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Erich Schoeller: I just wanted to say that
before we move on.

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Erich Schoeller: Now, you asked me about how
would I recommend setting up an effective
IPM strategy.

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Erich Schoeller: Well, the first thing, as
I mentioned, you know, one of the
difficulties in IPM is it does require
knowledge and it does require some
technical expertise.

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Erich Schoeller: So every grower, in order
to really be successful in IPM, needs to
take time to educate themselves on what the
options are and how they work.

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Erich Schoeller: That is really the basic
first step is education, right?

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Erich Schoeller: If you're educated on
what's going on, you'll be successful in
your pest management strategies.

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Erich Schoeller: So that being said, you
should have employees that are also
knowledgeable, and they're the ones that
are going to be out on the front lines,
working in your crop, looking at it
all the time.

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Erich Schoeller: If they don't know what
they're looking for and don't know how to
properly document the problems, your whole
IPM pyramid is going to basically collapse.
You need educated yourself and your skilled
workers. So that's your first basic step to
being successful in IPM.

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Erich Schoeller: Know your production and
where the risks are.

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Erich Schoeller: So when I say risks, where
are the parts of the facility where insects
can enter, or where are the crops that are
most susceptible to pests located.

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Erich Schoeller: If you know where you have
the most risks, you should be spending the
majority of your time monitoring those
areas that are high risk because that's
the most efficient use of your time.

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Erich Schoeller: Know your risks and know
your operation is the second step of
being successful.

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Erich Schoeller: And the third step is
diligence.

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Erich Schoeller: Don't just scout once
during a crop cycle.

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Erich Schoeller: For pests, be out there
weekly looking for pests or bi-weekly,
whatever you have the labor for. The more
detection and prevention that you're doing,
the greater the likelihood is that you're
going to find something before it becomes a
problem. And then finally, yeah, I think
the last component to be successful in IPM
is patience, right? One of the cons of IPM
is it's going to take longer to work
typically than chemical pesticides.

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Erich Schoeller: And a grower has to be
patient enough to let IPM work.

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Ping Yu: Yeah, it's not just for the IPM
to work, basically for a lot of things
in life.

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Ping Yu: You kind of have to wait and see if
this works, if not, and then make the
decision if you're going this route or just
change your journey to another different
direction.

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Ping Yu: What are some of your next steps
that you are excited about for IPM in your
lab in general, and that can help with our
industry, with our growers and in their
production.

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Erich Schoeller: My lab, we have a big focus
on biological control, but that's not all
we do.

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Erich Schoeller: Part of my program is
trying to understand what works and what
doesn't work from our standard playbook
that we have for pest control from what
we've researched on ornamental production.

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Erich Schoeller: So I focus a lot on the new
technologies that we use in these facilities
such as LED lighting, sole-source LED
lighting production, nanobubble technology,
which is creating higher oxygen level
environments for enhanced crop growth. One
of the things we didn't talk about much was
entomopathogenic nematodes, which we're
typically applying through irrigation or
drenching our crops.

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Erich Schoeller: How do they interact with
higher oxygen level environments?

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Erich Schoeller: Does that increase
their efficacy?

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Erich Schoeller: I mentioned lighting.

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Erich Schoeller: Very interested in how that
interacts with pests since insects' behavior
is so driven by different lighting quality,
spectrum, intensity.

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Erich Schoeller: Et cetera, understanding
the barriers to some of the more advanced
production, hydroponic...

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Erich Schoeller: growing facilities, vertical
farm growing facilities.

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Erich Schoeller: How does that impact the
movement of insects and ultimately how we
manage them in those really complex
growing situations?

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Erich Schoeller: Yeah.

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Ping Yu: Yeah. So with that in mind, if
people want to look for more of what you
do and some of your work, where do you
recommend they go to look for?

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00:42:54,320 --> 00:43:04,560
Erich Schoeller: Sure. So I'm on LinkedIn.
You can find me, Erich Schoeller. I also
have a website, which is
schoellerlab.caes.uga.edu.

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00:43:05,220 --> 00:43:09,700
Erich Schoeller: Where I post what I'm
doing and I've got my contact information
on there as well.

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Erich Schoeller: You can go to the
Department of Entomology and see my
faculty profile.

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Erich Schoeller: My email is available
there as well.

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Ping Yu: All right. Thank you so much for
sharing your experience and stories with
us today.

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00:43:25,540 --> 00:43:29,680
Ping Yu: And again, you're always welcome
back to talk more about your research.

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00:43:30,230 --> 00:43:34,040
Ping Yu: Thank you again for this wonderful
episode on IPM.

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Ping Yu: Thank you.

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Erich Schoeller: Thanks for having me.

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Ping Yu: If you're looking for more
information on IPM, AFE provides
additional resources.

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00:43:44,880 --> 00:43:49,880
Ping Yu: First, go to
sustainablebloom.org/industryguide/ipm.

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Ping Yu: Second, you can go to
endowment.org/ipm.

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Ping Yu: This website also provides you
guidance on building an IPM program, as
well as resources for SREPs and biorationals.

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00:44:04,060 --> 00:44:08,060
Ping Yu: To save you time, I will place all
those links in the show notes.

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00:44:08,760 --> 00:44:20,300
Ping Yu: This episode in our first season is
made possible through an educational grant
from the American Floral Endowment, whose
research priorities helped shape the topics
that are featured.

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00:44:20,820 --> 00:44:30,800
Ping Yu: To learn more about AFE and access
their research and educational resources,
visit their website at endowment.org.

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00:44:32,799 --> 00:44:35,700
Ping Yu: Conversations like this only happen
when you support the show.

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00:44:36,200 --> 00:44:41,960
Ping Yu: For more information and find ways
to support us, please go to bnbpod.com.

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00:44:43,520 --> 00:44:50,579
Ping Yu: bnbpod.com. If you like what you
are hearing, spread the word and share
this podcast with the people you love.

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00:44:50,820 --> 00:44:56,120
Ping Yu: Make sure you hit that subscription
button and give a review for the podcast.

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00:44:57,000 --> 00:45:06,760
Ping Yu: And as always, go check out the
show notes to learn more about this topic
and other topics we featured on the show
at bnbpod.com.

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00:45:07,120 --> 00:45:11,080
Ping Yu: Thank you for listening. Till the
next time, stay healthy and go plants!

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Ping Yu: [music]