2012 Highlights: UC IPM Annual Report

Andrew Sutherland

Shimat Joseph

New advisors expand UC IPM reach

The UC IPM extension team has increased by four. Entomologists Andrew Sutherland and Shimat Joseph bring the number of UC IPM advisors to seven, while Vonny Barlow and Surendra Dara, both entomology advisors for UC Cooperative Extension, joined as affiliated IPM advisors early this year.

Dara currently is conducting research on a friendly fungus that could help manage strawberry and vegetable pests, while Barlow is looking for more options to manage whiteflies that carry and infect watermelons with the virus that causes cucurbit yellow stunting disorder. Read more about their work later in this report.

Sutherland, who joined UC IPM in April, will be focusing on urban integrated pest management in the San Francisco Bay Area. Although insects and other arthropods are his primary emphasis, he will work in all areas of pest management, including weeds, diseases, and vertebrate pests.

Sutherland’s major goal is to educate his audiences about IPM principles and develop new IPM strategies to reduce pesticide applications and movement of pesticides into water. Current research projects include evaluating bed bug monitoring devices and reduced-risk pesticides for controlling nematodes that affect narcissus bulb production.

Sutherland will be working primarily with pest control operators and other licensed pest management professionals, landscape managers, pest control advisers, and public agency employees. He is also responsible for supporting UC Master Gardener programs that deliver IPM information to the general public. Sutherland serves Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo, San Francisco, and Santa Clara counties and is headquartered at the Alameda County UC Cooperative Extension office.

Sutherland’s education and experience are in plant-based IPM, but much of his new responsibility is for structural and industrial IPM applications. In support of this work, he recently became UC IPM’s first board-certified entomologist, a certification recognized by professionals in the urban pest management industry. To receive the credential, Sutherland demonstrated his expertise and applied knowledge of household, structural, and horticultural pests. The Entomological Society of America issues the certification.

Sutherland received his doctorate in entomology and master’s degree in horticulture and agronomy from UC Davis. As his graduate-level research, he studied the use of certain biological control agents (mycophagous coccinellids) in greenhouse IPM programs, augmentative biological control of whiteflies, and thrips sampling methods.

Joseph started working with UC IPM in December. Stationed in the Monterey County Cooperative Extension office, he will be delivering IPM information to growers and pest control advisers in Monterey, Santa Cruz, and San Benito counties. He will work primarily in vegetables, fruits and nuts, and nursery crops.

Joseph came to UC IPM from a post-doctoral position at Virginia Tech where he studied biology and management of the brown marmorated stink bug, a pest recently found in California. He was awarded his doctorate and master’s degrees, both in entomology, from the University of Georgia. His dissertation research focused on refining IPM strategies such as insecticides, fertilizer, host plant resistance, and biological control to reduce the invasive hemlock woolly adelgid in landscape and forest settings.

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