Newly revised IPM for Strawberries manual.

UC IPM manuals help growers make responsible pest control decisions

The newly revised IPM for Strawberries, second edition, offers more color photographs and line drawings to help identify pests and diseases. A new chapter is devoted to strawberry nursery propagation and production of bare-root transplants.

Commercial growers and home gardeners can find information on how to prevent and diagnose causes of damage; identify pests and key natural enemies; establish an IPM program; manage problems related to irrigation, nutrition, and the growing environment; and determine when direct control actions are necessary. (ANR publication 3351, $30.)

The books complement the online UC IPM Pest Management Guidelines: Strawberries which contains specific pesticide suggestions and other information that can be more easily kept up to date online than in print.

WaterTox database weighs risks of pesticides

The UC IPM Program has released an enhancement to its WaterTox database. By default, the interactive database supplies potential hazards associated with movement of pesticides within a high-risk soil, but in the new version users may select a specific soil type using menus or a geographic information system interface to locate a field of interest and the field's soil type.

WaterTox compares pesticide impacts on water quality among all the pesticides recommended in a UC IPM pest management guideline for a specific crop and pest. The database can be used to evaluate the potential for pesticides to move with water and eroded soil or organic matter, and to affect nontarget organisms. It can also help growers consider the risks of leaching and runoff in making pest management decisions, particularly pesticide choice.

The information in the WaterTox display is customized based on the soil type a user selects. Some soils may be less risky than others, so it is important to supply the specific soil type to get the best results from WaterTox.

WaterTox is a Web-based version of the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service Windows Pesticide Screening Tool (Win-PST), version 3.1. The pesticide and risk data and algorithims are all supplied by Win-PST, and the soils are from the NRCS SSURGO soil survey database.

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