Project Number: 5428-21000-013-01
Project Type: Specific Cooperative Agreement

Start Date: May 29, 2004
End Date: May 28, 2009

Objective:
Conduct laboratory, greenhouse, and field experiments examining the non-lethal and sub- lethal effects of pest management practices on pollinator biology and behavior, and subsequently on crop pollination. Conduct laboratory, field, and greenhouse experiments to examine the lethal effects of pest management practices on pollinators and subsequently on crop pollination.

Approach:
As a result of progress made in 2003, personnel and experimental protocols needed to conduct studies addressing the project objectives for 2004 are currently available. The specialty crops grant providing 61% of the Research Support Scientist salary is funded through Dec. of 2004. Progress towards meeting these objectives in 2004 should, therefore, be good. We will determine new compounds to be tested for lethal effects in 2004 (objective 2). Since few new chemicals for Lygus/aphid control are available, this list is expected to be shorter than the list of compounds tested in 2003. To the extent this is true more resources will be allocated to experiments examining for lethal effects of compounds in residual assays of field-treated foliage for compounds for which LD50 values were established in 2003, or are established in 2004 (objective 2). Compounds with LD50 values greater than 10 times the field rate will be given low priority in these tests. We will continue to conduct field cage experiments examining for sub lethal/non-lethal effects of compounds for which LD50's have been established. Because these experiments require a considerable amount of time to complete, they will be conducted only for a subset of the available compounds that are considered to have high potential for use in alfalfa seed. We also plan to make information from completed objectives available on the alfalfa seed industry web site, www.alfalfaseed.org, by March 1, 2004.