Trunk Injection: A Discriminating Delivering System for Horticulture Crop IPM

Abstract

Trunk injection technology represents an alternative delivery system to provide crop protection for horticultural crops of commercial and smallholder farmers in the developed and developing world. Field studies, laboratory bioassays, and residue profile analysis were used to determine the seasonal effectiveness of trunk injected insecticides against key apple insect pests. Insecticides formulated for trunk injection, imidacloprid, rynaxypyr, and emamectin benzoate were injected into semi dwarf Empire apple trees and evaluated for a wide range of insect pests. Imidacloprid controlled piercing and sucking pests, and emamectin benzoate controlled leaf rollers, Oriental fruit moth, and leafhoppers. The residue profiles for insecticides showed that vascular delivery was predominantly to foliage, with fruit residues far below the EPA maximum residue limits These results suggest that trunk injection is a promising delivering system for plant protection materials for control of foliar pests, while minimizing impacts on natural enemies, eliminating spray drift, and reducing the pesticide load in the agro-ecosystem. For smallholder farmers this low-capital investment technology has the potential to significantly reduce the human health risks associated with pesticide use, while protecting high value horticultural crops from pests.to their target, with only 29 to 56% of the applied spray solution being deposited on the tree canopy, and the remaining product drifting to ground or other off-target end points [4,[9][10][11] (Figure 1).Small holder farmers' use of hand-held sprayers is inefficient and often results in excessive worker exposure to the pesticides being applied. Thus the risks of pesticide exposure to the health of farmers and farm workers remain a critical concern in the developing world. Pesticides are estimated to be responsible for 4% of all deaths from all accidental poisonings, and health risks from pesticide exposure are magnified for poor farm workers [12]. Although smallholder men are

Insecticide dose and seasonal timing of trunk injection in apples influence efficacy and residues in nectar and plant parts

“…Therefore, other pesticide delivery systems need to be developed to reduce environmental exposure, improve accuracy, and reduce costs. Trunk injection is a discriminating delivery system that reduces pesticide losses and has low capital investment …”

Choosing an Adequate Pesticide Delivery System for Managing Pathogens with Difficult Biologies: Case Studies onDiplodia corticola, Venturia inaequalisandErwinia amylovora

“…Otherwise, these should be injected much earlier in comparison to our injection dates, probably in fall of the previous year, to increase the time for compound accumulation and ultimately improve the disease reduction. A process of optimizing the trunk injection timing/s is a common topic research on agricultural tree crops to maximize the effect in pathogen or pest control [10,12,50,56]. It appears that higher dose of injected compounds might be necessary for longer-lasting control of fire blight on both flowers and shoots.…”

“…Domesticated apple, Malus pumila is an important research model in continental climate because management of V. inaequalis in humid regions requires intensive spray programs with as many as 15-22 spray applications of fungicides in one growing season [55]. Since this research is novel for tree disease management in contemporary agriculture, the proof of concept experiments on cultivated trees are conducted by using the trunk injection devices primarily designed for delivering pesticides and fertilizers for tree protection purposes in landscapes and urban forestry [10,44,52,56]. Besides the smaller tree sizes in orchards in comparison to the urban landscapes as an obvious advantage driving the investigation of efficacy of pesticides delivered with this method [52, 57,58], some of the key researched topics are efficacy and its lasting [10,11], application timing optimization for season-and two-seasons-long control [12,50,59], trunk wounding by injection ports i.e.…”

Comparison of drill- and needle-based tree injection technologies in healing of trunk injection ports on apple trees

“…Trunk injection for delivery of plant protective compounds and nutrients provides targetprecise pest control and nutrient deficiency correction in landscape trees. Trunk injection as an in planta delivery method allows precise and confined compound delivery to trees (Ahmed et al, 2010;Guillot and Bory, 1997;VanWoerkom et al, 2014;Wilson, 1979;Wise et al, 2014). It is an environmentally safer alternative for pesticide application, which utilizes a tree"s vascular system to translocate and distribute active compounds into the canopy (Percival and Boyle, 2005).…”

“…It is an environmentally safer alternative for pesticide application, which utilizes a tree"s vascular system to translocate and distribute active compounds into the canopy (Percival and Boyle, 2005). Since injected compounds are enclosed within the tree, this method allows increased selectivity of exposure to pathogens and insect pests (Wise et al, 2014). Further, trunk injection is a superior delivery system because it enhances the activity of xylem mobile compounds such as oxytetracycline, which is used for fire blight control on crabapples and pears (Aćimović et al, 2015).…”