Attune Agriculture, a hydrocolloid-based agricultural products producer, says results from a new study conducted on strawberries show that only focusing on pests does not always equate to what ultimately matters most for growers: more yield.
While chili thrips have become more difficult pests to control in strawberries, many growers use chemical and organic rotations to fight the pest.
Attune Agriculture said it evaluated its Entrapment insecticide, which is a new class of insecticides that uses a physical mode of action to control pests, against a standard organic and standard conventional rotation at the Florida Ag Research facility in Thonotosassa, Fla.
The trial with Entrapment and the organic rotation were comparable in most evaluated categories, and tough the conventional rotation was the most effective at pest control, there was a difference in total marketable yield, the company said in a news release.
Attune Agriculture said the Entrapment rotation produced 195 more pounds of marketable strawberries per acre than the organic rotation, which calculates to about $912 more per acre. The conventional program produced 234 pounds less than the Entrapment rotation.
The company said the Entrapment rotation is 16% more economical in cost than the organic rotation, bringing the total economic impact to an extra $969 per acre for the grower. Compared to the conventional rotation, the economic impact is an extra $1,072 per acre.
“This study confirms what we have heard anecdotally from our growers — that yield is often increased with the addition of Attune products, even in cases where traditional factors used to measure control, such as insect counts, do not seem dramatically different,” said Ed Quattlebaum, director of product development at Attune Agriculture. “Plant health is multi-dimensional and complex. This study shows that Entrapment not only provided comparable insect control, it also impacted the overall health of the plant, resulting in a higher yield than either the chemical or organic rotations.”
