Agrilus mali

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Dmitrii Musolin, 07.08.2013 21:50

Colleagues, a request has been received, and I want to help you.

How serious is Agrilus mali a pest? Are there any control measures?

Dear Dr. Musolin, I understand that Agrilus mali is a serious pest in Russia. Do you have any information on control methods, or let me know if anybody is working on this pest. Would you mind in sending a copy of the following publication?

Agrilus mali: a quarantine pest for Russia

Agrilus mali is buprestid beetle with a limited distribution in Russia (Amur Province, Primorskii and Khabarovskii territories – all in the Far east). It also occurs in China, Japan and Korea. The larva burrows in the sapwood and heartwood of branches and shoots of apple in which it overwinters. Adult emerge in July, and lays the eggs from which a new generation of larvae emerges to attack the wood in late summer and autumn. Apple trees are damaged in nurseries and orchards. Affected braches show depressions which dry out and split. Young shoots show the track of larval feeding on bark. The branches of a tree can carry up to 70 attacks, and the trunk up to 300, causing individual branches or the whole tree to die. Control measures included thorough pruning and burning of the pruned wood, uprooting and burning of the most damaged trees, insecticide treatments, shaking trees to catch adult beetles in trays of mineral oil. Strict measures are taken Russia to stop spread of this pest to the European part. It may be of concern to other European countries.

Reference: Nikritin, L.M. (1994) Apple buprestid beetle. Zashchita Rastenii, No. 3, 46p.

Thanks for your help.

Gadi V.P. Reddy, Ph.D.
Superintendent & Associate Professor
of Entomology/Insect Ecology
Montana State University
Western Triangle Ag Research Center

This post was edited by Musolin - 08.08.2013 15: 36

Comments

21.08.2013 13:39, Юрий Токарев

response sent on 21.08.2013:

Dear Dr. Reddy,

I am writing to you in order to resond to your mail regarding subj forwarded to me by my colleague Dr. Ivan Dubovskiy. I work in the Instritute of Plant Protection, Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and though I have little expertise concerning coleopteran pests of orchards, here are some suggestions aimed at answering you request.

1) the fact that the pest is the quarantine one for Russia makes it unsuitable object to work on it; the entomologists do not have such possibility while specific research interest is seemingly neglible while the quarantine services do not perform real studies. For these reasons, extensive googling of Russian web resources to find the respective specialists retrieved null results.

2) There are web-accessible instructions to handle this pest, including monitoring and control measures, issued by quarantine services, but they are not much specific and seemingly repeat the major guidelines offered in the paper you're looking for. I might translate these instructions for you if you need as they're brief. As for the requested paper, it must be present at our institute's library, I can e-mail you the scanned copy but be aware it is written in Russian. If still interested, please, remind me of it after September 02.

all the best,
Yuri Tokarev