THE IR-4 PROGRAM: HELPING THE U.S. BLUEBERRY INDUSTRY CONTROL HIGH-PRIORITY INSECT, DISEASE, AND WEED PESTS

For over forty years, the IR-4 Project (Interregional Research Project 4) has been the primary avenue for obtaining new pest management tools for specialty crop growers, through a process of developing field residue data to support new EPA tolerances and labeled pesticide uses.
In many cases, the agricultural chemical industry cannot justify the time and expense required to research much-needed crop protection products on these high-value crops, therefore IR-4 steps in to fulfill this need.
Through a formal process, the blueberry industry, university pest management specialists, and IR-4 personnel have worked together to prioritize research by IR-4. These efforts have led to new EPA registrations for the blueberry industry, enhancing adoption of reduced-risk integrated pest management (IPM) strategies.
We will describe how grower pest management priorities from major blueberry production regions in the United States are used to generate data that support successful applications for IR-4 residue studies.
We will highlight examples of how this process has been used to provide blueberry growers with some recently-registered reduced-risk pesticides.
These new pest management tools enable growers to continue delivering economic yields of highest-quality berries while also minimizing the environmental impact of blueberry production.

IX International Vaccinium Symposium

K. Dorschner, R. Isaacs, J. Wise, J. DeFrancesco, D. Trinka

minor use, pest management, pesticide, specialty crop, Vaccinium

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2009.810.37