Seasonal activity of plum curculio in Southeastern peaches

Plum curculio (PC), Conotrachelus nenuphar (Herbst) is a key pest in Southeastern peach production by infesting fruit and decreasing yield. To establish a successful PC management program, understanding the pest’s behavior is important. The objectives of our study were (1) to investigate PC’s seasonal abundance in peach orchards, and (2) to investigate if PC in Southeastern peaches exhibit the “edge effect”, where more PC are present at the peach trees closer to a forested border adjacent to the peach orchard than at the peach trees closer to the center of the orchard. To investigate PC’s seasonal abundance and distribution, we weekly monitored PC activity from early March to late October in two peach orchards located in Byron, Georgia. We collected PC by using both circle trunk traps and the beat sheeting technique at the perimeter trees and interior trees of the peach orchards. Plum curculio captures on each sampling day throughout the season represent the pest’s seasonal occurrence in the peach orchards. If PC exhibit the edge effect, more PC are present at the perimeter trees than the interior trees.