Progress 04/01/17 to 06/30/21
Outputs
Target Audience:Farmers, other agricultural professionals, extension and NRCS personnel, soil health and IPM practitioners, soil scientists, agronomists, and other agricultural scientists. @font-face { panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic- mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-520092929 1073786111 9 0 415 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin-top:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-bottom:8.0pt; margin-left:0in; line-height:107%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; ; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast- mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi- mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}p.paragraph, li.paragraph, div.paragraph {mso-style-name:paragraph; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-margin-top-alt:auto; margin-right:0in; mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; ; mso-fareast-}.MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; ; mso-ansi-; mso-bidi-; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast- mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi- mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}.MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; margin-bottom:8.0pt; line-height:107%;}div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?This project has provided training and professional development opportunities for two graduate students in the Tooker lab and one graduate student in the Wickings lab. The graduate students led the experiments and also engaged in numerous scientific meetings as part of their professional development. The project also provided training opportunities for ten undergraduate student research assistants (three in NY, seven in PA). The two graduate students from Penn State traveled to the Wickings lab for training on the extracellular enzyme protocol. This interaction also provided a professional development opportunity for one technician in the Wickings lab who led all training efforts. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?To date, the results of our project have been disseminated to scientists (faculty, graduate students and postdocs) via oral presentations at the Annual Meeting of the Entomological Society of America, the Annual Symposium of the Cornell Entomology Department, and three departmental seminars (two at Penn State, one at Cornell). What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
We conducted two three-year field experiments, one in Pennsylvania, one in New York. Both experiments were 2x3 factorial designs with large plots that kept the same footprints each year. We used regionally relevant rotations. Pennsylvania used a corn/soy/corn sequence with plots that were planted with cover crops or not (factors in the experimental design in PA: cover crop/no cover crop; three levels of pest management: preventative insecticides, IPM, or no insecticides). New York had a corn/soybean sequence that followed alfalfa hay or fallow, which was crossed with the same three levels of pest management. In NY, due to the long-term nature of crop rotation sequences used for dairy production, we also sampled 24 commercial corn/alfalfa fields at set stages along the rotational sequence (1-3 years in corn and 1-3 years in alfalfa). In spring and fall soils were collected from each field for soil invertebrate extraction. Invertebrates were chosen for this project to serve as soil health indicators. We predicted that soil invertebrate communities would be lower during corn production years than during alfalfa production due to the increased frequency and intensity of soil cultivation. Across the three years at the three sites, we measured variables associated with soil quality (physical, chemical, and biological, including a functional microbial analysis), arthropod populations (herbivores, detritivores, predators), biological control as provided by generalist predators and entomopathogens (mostly fungi). In soil and cover crops, we also measured pesticides residues. At the end of each season we measured yield. In Pennsylvania, we found that using insecticides provided a small benefit to pest management in soya by slightly lowering pest abundance but this decrease was not evident in yield. Rather, vegetative cover (cover crops and weed biomass) early in the season was key for reducing pest density, particularly white grubs and slugs, and the amount of damage that plants received. These results seemed to be largely driven by increased abundance of arthropod predators, which provided top-down control of plant-feeding pests. Preventative pest management tended to decrease predation rates compared to a no-pest-management control. Unlike preventative insect control tactics (neonicotinoid seed coatings and broadcast sprays of pyrethroid insecticides), which can provide pest control for only a few weeks, cover crops and their residue can lead to season-long pest-control benefits that extend into autumn. Contrary to our expectation, the IPM strategy, which required just one insecticide application, was more disruptive to the predator community than preventative pest management likely because the applied pyrethroid was more acutely toxic than neonicotinoids to a wider range of arthropods. Contrary to our expectation, we also found that cover crops did not help mitigate neonicotinoid residue left in soil by insecticide-coated seeds. While we detected neonicotinoids in cover crops, high early-season dissipation of neonicotinoids from soil provided little opportunity for winter-planted cover crops to absorb significant neonicotinoid residues. Because the majority of neonicotinoids from seed coatings dissipated shortly after planting, residues did not accumulate in soil, but persisted at low concentrations (<5 ppb). Persistent residues could be attributed to historic neonicotinoid use and recent, nearby neonicotinoid use. Tracking neonicotinoid concentrations over time revealed a large amount of local inter-plot movement of neonicotinoids; in untreated plots, contamination was higher when plots were adjacent to more than one treated plots. Our results indicate that neonicotinoid insecticides move extensively within fields, and suggest that these water-soluble insecticides have strong potential to move into habitats adjacent and/or nearby crop fields. In New York, we found inconsistent effects of neonicotinoid seed treatments and foliar sprays. In some years, together they negatively influenced total predator activity-density, spider activity-density, predation at the soil surface, and the belowground biological control potential of entomopathogenic fungi. In one year, we detected an increase in the activity-density of spiders in preventative plots. The influence of insecticides seemed to vary with when they were applied and the weather conditions. Overall, the use of insecticides did not improve crop yield in either maize or soybean. These findings highlight that the use of a prophylactic pesticide program may not always be necessary for maximum crop productivity and that this management approach can occasionally have unintended negative consequences on above- and belowground soil biota and the ecosystem services they provide. Pest management practices also influenced soil health, belowground biological activity and decomposer communities. Overall, there were limited changes to soil fertility and stability between pest management practices, although higher levels of copper were observed in preventative plots and higher levels of manganese in IPM plots at the end of the study, depending on field. However, preventative management increased microbial enzyme activity and decomposer feeding activity relative to IPM, and both pest management practices (preventative and IPM) increased abundance of decomposer microarthropods, depending on taxa and pesticide input compared to pest management-free controls. On commercial fields, we found that alfalfa fields exhibited greater soil invertebrate densities than corn fields. Additionally, the abundance of collembola did not differ among rotation years in corn but did during alfalfa, reflecting the repeat disturbance caused by cultivation in annual crops.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2021
Citation:
Pearsons, K. A., and J. F. Tooker. 2021. Preventative insecticide use affects arthropod decomposers and decomposition in field crops, Applied Soil Ecology 157: 103757.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2021
Citation:
Pearsons, K. A., E. K. Rowen, K. Elkin, K. Wickings, R. Smith, and J. F. Tooker. 2021. Neonicotinoids from seed coatings persistently contaminate adjacent no-till fields, despite mitigation efforts. Environmental Science & Technology, 55: 46794687.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Under Review
Year Published:
2021
Citation:
Johnston-Fennell, L., J. F. Tooker, B. Nault, and K. Wickings. Preventative pest management in field crops influences the biological control potential of epigeal arthropods and soil-borne entomopathogenic fungi. (In revision at Field Crops Research, June 2021).
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Under Review
Year Published:
2021
Citation:
Rowen, E. K., K. A. Pearsons, R. G. Smith, K. Wickings, J. F. Tooker. Do pesticide seed coatings diminish the promise of conservation agriculture? (Submitted to Ecological Applications, April 2021).
|
Progress 04/01/20 to 03/31/21
Outputs
Target Audience: Farmers, other agricultural professionals, extension and NRCS personnel, soil health and IPM practitioners, soil scientists, agronomists, and other agricultural scientists. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?This project has provided training and professional development opportunities for two graduate students in the Wickings lab. One graduate student successfully defended her thesis in 2020 and is finishing all manuscript preparation from the thesis. The additional student is completing all final analyses on our multi-farm alfalfa-corn/soybean rotation project and will lead manuscript prep. This project also provided an opportunity for the existing student to engage with commercial growers in the Finger Lakes region of NY on the topic of soil health. In conjunction with this effort, the student also received a one year Extension-Outreach Assistantship (EOA) from the Department of Entomology at Cornell University. Under this assistantship, the student is developing 3 extension fact sheets, one short video, and soil biological health farm reports tailored to individual producers that she has worked with. To date, the student has met with all producers to review their soil data, and she will be making final edits on all other materials during spring of 2021. This project training and professional development of two graduate students in the Tooker lab. Both students defended their PhD theses during summer of 2020 and they are working on getting their chapters published in peer-reviewed journals. Two papers have had success so far, with at least two more coming. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?To date, the results of our project have been disseminated to scientists (faculty, graduate students and postdocs) at annual society meetings and the Cornell Entomology Department Annual Symposium and the exit seminars of the graduating students. As stated above, results have also been disseminated individually to cooperating producers during virtual one-on-one meetings. Students presented their work at the Annual Meeting of the Entomological Society of America in St. Louis in November 2019. COVID-19 prevented other in person meetings, but two students presented as part of the virtual 2020 Annual Meeting of the Entomological Society of America. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We were recently granted a NCE for this project to complete a few final tasks. In NY, we will continue to process and analyze soil arthropod samples. We will also complete one final manuscript from a graduate student thesis and another from the multi-farm alfalfa-corn/soybean rotation study described above.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Objectives 1-3: Epigeic Predators, Predation and Yield All data have been analyzed and one manuscript has been submitted for peer review. Soil mesofauna In NY, final analysis of soil microarthropod samples from the manipulative experiment at Cornell AgriTech has been completed. All data have been analyzed and compiled with data from bait lamina strips, microbial extracellular enzyme activities, soil health analysis and pesticide residue analysis and a manuscript is in prep for peer review. To quantify the differences in soil biology at different stages of a typical NY dairy crop rotation sequence (alfalfa-corn/soybean) we also collected soil animal samples from forty eight different commercial dairy production farms in upstate NY! Fields were selected based on stage of rotation within the sequence noted above. Soil animal sample processing is near completion and one graduate student is finishing the identification of slide mounted specimens. A manuscript is also being prepared for this project examining soil animal community patterns over the course of dairy crop rotation and testing the predictions that soil animal communities recover (increased diversity, abundance, and soil indicator taxa) during the perennial alfalfa phase of production. This component of our grant is the last remaining and will be completed within the timeframe of our current no-cost extension to Cornell University. In Pennsylvania, we have completed our work with mesofauna and insecticides and published this work in Applied Soil Ecology and Environmental Science & Technology. We found that neonicotinoid and pyrethroids insecticides both have significant negative effects on mesofauna populations with cascading effects on decomposition. We also learned that neonicotinoid insecticides, which are water soluble, move laterally far more than has been previously reported and that downslope fields or habitats are likely to be contaminated by movement of neonics from adjacent upslope fields.
Publications
- Type:
Other
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
Fennell, L., Investigating the Feedbacks Between Soil Health and Pest Management in Field Crops. MS thesis presented to the Department of Entomology, Cornell University, June 2020.
- Type:
Other
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
Elizabeth Rowen, Soil Management Changes Biological Control and Plant Resistance to Insect Herbivores. PhD, 15 May 2020, Department of Entomology, The Pennsylvania State University
- Type:
Other
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
Kirsten Pearsons, The Response of Non-Target Soil Invertebrates to Preventive Insecticide Use in Field Crops. PhD, 22 May 2020, Department of Entomology, The Pennsylvania State University.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
Rowen, E. K., K. A. Pearsons, K. Wickings, R. G. Smith and J. F. Tooker. Do pesticide seed coatings break the promise of conservation agriculture? Annual Meeting of the Entomological Society of America (Virtual presentation), November 2020.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
Pearson, E. A., and J. F. Tooker. Opening a can of worms, or addressing an oversight? Accounting for diversity in soil ecotoxicology. Annual Meeting of the Entomological Society of America (Virtual presentation), November 2020.
- Type:
Theses/Dissertations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
Lindsay Fennell, Investigating the Feedbacks Between Soil Health and Pest Management in Field Crops. MS, Summer 2020, Cornell University
- Type:
Theses/Dissertations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
Elizabeth Rowen, Soil Management Changes Biological Control and Plant Resistance to Insect Herbivores. PhD, August 2020, The Pennsylvania State University.
- Type:
Theses/Dissertations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
Kirsten Pearsons, The Response of Non-Target Soil Invertebrates to Preventive Insecticide Use in Field Crops. PhD, August 2020, The Pennsylvania State University.
- Type:
Other
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2021
Citation:
Pearsons, K. A., and J. F. Tooker. 2021. Preventative insecticide use affects arthropod decomposers and decomposition in field crops, Applied Soil Ecology 157: 103757.
- Type:
Other
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2021
Citation:
Pearsons, K. A., E. K. Rowen, K. Elkin, K. Wickings, R. Smith, and J. F. Tooker. 2021. Neonicotinoids from seed coatings persistently contaminate adjacent no-till fields, despite mitigation efforts. Environmental Science & Technology, in press. Available online: https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.0c05547
|
Progress 04/01/19 to 03/31/20
Outputs
Target Audience: Farmers, other agricultural professionals, extension and NRCS personnel, soil health and IPM practitioners, soil scientists, agronomists, and other agricultural scientists. ? Changes/Problems:The analytical facility at Penn State that helped us with our pesticide residue analysis had some maintenance issues with their equipment delaying our access to our results. These challenges have recently been solved and we now have the data. These data are key to our results because we expect the amount of insecticide residue to relate to various arthropod and soil quality metrics we assessed. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?This project has provided training and professional development opportunities for two graduate students in the Tooker lab and one graduate student in the Wickings lab. The graduate students are leading the experiments and have also engaged in numerous scientific meetings as part of their professional development. In 2019, the project also provided training opportunities for five undergraduate student research assistants (two in NY, three in PA). The two graduate students from Penn State traveled to the Wickings lab for training on the extracellular enzyme protocol. This interaction also provided a professional development opportunity for one technician in the Wickings lab who led all training efforts. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?To date, the results of our project have been disseminated to scientists (faculty, graduate students and postdocs) at annual society meetings and the Cornell Entomology Department Annual Symposium. All presentations have been oral. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We were recently granted a NCE for this project to complete a few final tasks. In NY, we will continue to process and analyze soil arthropod samples. In PA, we will work with the pesticide residue data and relate these values to arthropod populations and soil quality metrics. We will also draft two manuscripts currently formatted a part of the graduate students' theses.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
?Results For the most part all 2019 data have been processed and analyzed statistically in R using linear mixed effects models with treatment, season and field as fixed effects and using a significance level of P<0.05. Currently, data has been analyzed cumulatively across years as well as analyzed separately within year. The data that have yet to be processed and analyzed are microarthropods for NY and insecticide residues for PA--these efforts are ongoing Pest populations: In PA and NY, similar to 2017, there were no pests that warranted any management action in the IPM, so the untreated controls and IPM plots were identical. Nevertheless, in PA in 2019 and consistent with our expectations, we detected a significant negative effect of cover crops on slug and white grub populations, indicating that, contrary to popular opinion, cover crops can contribute to lower pest populations. Not surprisingly, preventative insecticide use decreased insect pest populations relative to our control plots, but IPM plots provided a similar level of control indicating that insecticides are not necessary to reduce the amount of damage that pests can inflict; natural enemies can have similar effects. We also detected an interaction between cover crops and pesticide use, with pests being higher in IPM plots without cover, further suggesting that cover crops can contribute to pest control. Predation - sentinel prey assays In NY, both within years and across years, predation activity was higher during the evening compared to daytime. In 2019 we found significantly higher predation in preventative plots in one out of three fields, as well as higher predation in preventative plots in one field at night; this correlates with our predator activity-density results given that Lycosid spiders are nocturnal and actively hunt at night. In PA, our sentinel prey results from June aligned with our expectations; predation of sentinel waxworms was lowest in our preventative plots with no cover crops, while it was highest in the control plots that had cover crops. Importantly, IPM plots experienced intermediate levels of predation, not significantly different from control or preventative plots, indicating that IPM can improve pest control relative to plots regularly managed with insecticides. We also detected an interaction between treatment and cover crops, indicating that cover crops can improve pest control depending on the type of insect management that is used. For our August sentinel prey, we detected a similar pattern overall though generally high predation and high variation rendered the result insignificant. Notably, the positive influence of cover crops on predation extended into August, indicating that cover crops can influence pest control well beyond their termination, which occurs prior to planting. Predators populations : In NY for 2019, we found no effect of treatment on total number of predators, although we found significantly more spiders in preventatively managed plots, the inverse of our findings in 2017. This effect was driven by lycosid spiders, which had significantly higher activity-densities midseason compared to the end of season (673 and 14, respectively), and were significantly higher midseason in preventative plots compared to untreated controls. Notably, the only difference between preventative and untreated plots midseason is a pesticidal seed treatment. In PA, we found that cover crops marginally increased predator community abundance, supporting our sentinel prey results. For individual taxa, we found that insecticides marginally decreased carabid and rove beetle abundance. Unexpectedly, cover crops also decreased carabid abundance. For rove beetles, cover crops increased their abundance, and the effect was particularly strong with in the IPM treatment. For ants, their abundance was negatively affected by preventative insecticides, but an interaction with cover crop indicates that cover crops can improve their populations. Spiders were unaffected by treatments, but we detected a marginal treatment x cover interaction indicating that the influence of cover crops depended on the pest management strategy being used. Fungal Entomopathogens We found no cumulative treatment effects on the two genera of beneficial soil fungi that we recovered, Metarhizium spp and Beauveria spp., although we did find significant seasonal pathogenicity with higher infection potential of Metarhizium midseason and higher infection potential of Beauveria at the end of the season. In 2019, there were no effects of treatment on the infection potential of either Metarhizium or Beauveria. Soil mesofauna In NY,arthropod samples are still being processed. In PA, variation across treatments and timepoints made it difficult to draw conclusions--treatment does not seem to be a good predictors of mesofauna abundance. Invertebrate Decomposition Activity - Bait Lamina Strips We used bait lamina strips to assess decomposition by invertebrates in our fields. In NY, we observed significantly more decomposition activity at the end of the season compared to mid-season samples. In one field, we found significantly more activity 0 - 5cm in preventative plots compared to untreated plots. In PA, we did not detect an influence of treatment or cover crop on decomposition. Microbial Decomposition Activity - Microbial Extracellular Enzymes In PA and NY, we have assessed enzyme activity; these enzymes are indicators of microbial decomposition activity. For NY, we found that the activities of all extracellular hydrolase enzymes were higher midseason and that phenol oxidaseandperoxidase activity was higher at the end of the season. We also found that acid phosphatase was significantly higher in preventative plots than in untreated plots. Other ongoing work in turfgrass in the Wickings lab has exhibited a similar pattern showing that microbial enzyme activities often increase in soils following the application of neonicotinoids (Bray and Wickings, in prep) suggesting that microbes may be capable of using some pesticides as substrates. For PA, we detected positive relationships between soil enzymes (acid phosphatase, beta-N-acetylglucoaminidase, and beta-glucosidase) and soil nutrient content. We have not detected any relation of these enzymes with treatment, but we hypothesized that they could be influence by pesticide use, and now that we have our pesticide residue data in hand we will pursue these analyses shortly. Yield In both states, we observed no differences in estimated crop yield among the different pest management practices. For both states, these results suggest that the use of preventive, calendar-based pest management practices have been unwarranted in all three years of our study.
Publications
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Pearson, E. A., and J. F. Tooker. Toxicity of neonicotinoids and pyrethroids to non-target soil invertebrates. Annual Meeting of the Entomological Society of America, St. Louis, MO, November 2019.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Fennell, L., Tooker, J., and Wickings, K. Calendar based pest management practices have seasonal impacts on the abundance of epigeic predators and their activity. Annual meeting of the Entomology Society of America, St. Louis, MO, November 2019.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Fennell, L., Tooker, J., Wickings, K. 2019. Pest management tactics have seasonal impacts on the biological control potential of entomopathogenic fungi. Cornell University 8th Annual Department of Entomology Symposium conducted at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY
|
Progress 04/01/18 to 03/31/19
Outputs
Target Audience: Farmers, other agricultural professionals, extension and NRCS personnel, soil health and IPM practitioners, soil scientists, agronomists, and other agricultural scientists. Changes/Problems:In both locations, early season rains delayed planting beyond our target dates. In PA, these rains also hindered our weed management program, so we were unable to apply our post-emergent herbicide. As a result, we had high weed populations in some of our plots, which likely affected our results. In NY, due to limited availability of untreated glyphosate-tolerant seed in early 2019, we were forced to purchase certified organic seed and work with the Cornell University Seed Improvement Program to treat half of all seed with Cruiser 5FS (thiamethoxam) and Maxim Quattro (fludioxonil thiabendazole, mefenoxam, azoxystrobin) based on EPA pesticide labels to create the necessary pesticide seed treatments. This allowed us to create the same treatment array as used in years one and two of the experiment with the exception that none of the seed for 2019 is glyphosate-tolerant. To combat this, weed management will be achieved using alternative products. Further, due to observations of high earthworm activity in soils during decomposition assays (lamina strips) we will be including earthworm sampling as an additional metric in 2019. Earthworms will be sampled either using a standard mustard extraction protocol or hand excavation of 0.5m-2 plots. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?This project has provided training and professional development opportunities for two graduate students in the Tooker lab and one graduate student in the Wickings lab. The graduate student are leading the experiments and have also engaged in numerous scientific meetings as part of their professional development. The project has also provided training opportunities for five undergraduate student research assistants (three in PA, two in NY). The two graduate students from Penn State traveled to the Wickings lab for training on the extracellular enzyme protocol. This interaction also provided a professional development opportunity for one technician in the Wickings lab who led all training efforts. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?To date, the results of our project have been disseminated to scientists (faculty, graduate students and postdocs) at annual society meetings and the Cornell Entomology Department Annual Symposium. All presentations have been oral. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?The third and final field seasons have been in initiated in PA and NY. In PA, fields were planted at the end of May. In NY, fields were planted in mid June (significant rainfall in upstate New York restricted planting earlier in the season). Prior to planting, we assessed cover crop biomass growth and sampled soil. Once crops were planted, we assessed stand establishment, conducted bait lamina assays, and began scouting regularly for pests and natural enemies.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Field prep and treatment establishment: In 2018, we completed year two of our project at two locations (PA, NY). All fields were prepped and analyzed for nutrients in spring of 2018, and planted in early June to corn or soybean. As outlined in the proposal, control plots received no insecticide or fungicide inputs and preventative plots planted with pesticidal seed treatments and mid-season sprayed with a mix of pyrethroid insecticides and strobilurin fungicides. Unlike 2017, when IPM scouting did not reveal any pests above economic thresholds, in 2018 both locations detected significant pests. In PA, scouting late in 2017 indicated that white grub populations were above economic threshold, so in 2018, we applied tefluthrin at planting to protect corn roots from white grub feeding. In NY in 2018, weekly scouting revealed in early summer that Japanese beetle (Popillia japonica) exceeded the economic thresholds for soybean, triggering a foliar application of pyrethroids. Sampling: We sampled fields in PA and NY for soil pesticide residues 8 weeks after planting and for invertebrate predators and decomposers twice (once mid-season, once in autumn). Pesticide analyses have yet to be completed. For predators, as in 2017, their activity/populations were evaluated using pitfall traps and decomposers using Berlese heat extraction from soil cores. Paired with our community assessments we also conducted bioassays for epigeal predation (timed field assay using Galleria mellonella as sentinel prey), sub-surface entomopathogenic fungal infection (fungal incubation assay using G. mellonella as sentinel larva), invertebrate-driven decomposition (substrate-filled bait lamina strips buried in soil), and microbial enzyme activities (fluorescence- and absorbance-based 96-well plate assays) in an effort to link taxonomic and functional responses of predators and decomposers to pest management practices. Yield estimates were taken from all fields. Results: With the exception of the soil invertebrates, pesticide residues, and some enzyme activities, all 2018 data have been processed and analyzed statistically. Currently, each project year is being analyzed separately. Pest populations: Pest populations in PA in 2018 were generally mild, including slugs. Nevertheless, the rye cover crop that we planted to help establish soil health facilitated significantly higher slug populations in the subsequent corn crop. We did not, however, find that our pest management treatments (preventative or IPM) altered slug populations in our corn plots but slug populations were low compared to previous years. Contrary to conventional wisdom, pest damage (slugs + insects) to corn in 2018 was less following the rye cover crop, and this result more or less persists (the results is marginally significant) when data from 2017 and 2018 are combined for corn and soybeans. As mentioned above, our scouting indicated that white grubs populations were above economic threshold, so in 2018 we applied tefluthrin. Notably, white grubs populations did not respond to this insecticide application; white grubs were equal across treatments in 2018 indicating our scouting in 2017 did not accurately predict populations in 2018 or that the insecticide provided no measurable benefit for controlling white grubs. For weed populations, we found that, as expected, the rye cover crop suppressed weed populations in 2017, but in 2018 we did not detect a similar effect, likely due to high weed populations. In NY, the only pest species that exceeded economic threshold were Japanese beetle. In the IPM plots, the insecticide application appropriately controlled beetle populations. Preventative plots also had high populations of beetles that were controlled by the that planned insecticide application. Notably, feeding damage did not appear to influence yield compared to the control plots. Predators populations In 2018 in PA, neither the predator community as a whole nor the carabid beetle responded to our pest management treatments, but this outcome could have been influenced by weed populations that we struggled to control. In NY, we observed no effects of pest management treatment on predator composition/abundance. This is in contrast with our 2017 finding that the abundance of lycosid spiders was affected by both pest management treatments during our midseason sampling event. Predation - sentinel prey assays: In PA, when we assessed using a sentinel prey predation by the epigeal predator community, including carabid beetles, we found equal predation across our treatments. We found that, compared to the preventative pesticide and control treatments, the IPM treatment marginally increased consumption of weed seeds in soybean fields. As expected, we also found that seed predation tended to be lowest when an insecticidal seed treatment was present. In NY, predation activity was higher during the evening compared to daytime, but we observed no effects of pest management treatment on predator function. Soil mesofauna: Unexpectedly, neither our pest management treatment nor cover crop treatment influenced activity of arthropod mesofauna (collembola, mites, and other decomposers); however, generally low invertebrate abundance limited our capacity to understand their response to our experimental treatment. Fungal Entomopathogens: In NY at both mid and end of the season, we found significantly lower infection potential of the beneficial fungal pathogen Beauveria spp. in preventative plots that received insecticides and fungicide applications, suggesting that pesticide applications can limit activity of biocontrol fungi, but the results varied across fields. Unlike Beauveria, there was no effect of treatment on Metarhizium spp., another group of beneficial fungi. Invertebrate Decomposition Activity - Bait Lamina Strips: We used bait lamina strips to assess decomposition by invertebrates in our fields. In PA, we found that decomposition as measured by our strips was decreased when neonicotinoid seed treatments were deployed with a cover crop, but not in absence of the cover crop, a relationship that we do not yet fully understand. In NY, we observed significant more decomposition activity at the end of the season but an inconsistent effect across our fields. In one field, IPM plots had lower feeding activity than control plots, the difference between these two treatments being an insecticide spray in the IPM plots. We also detected a marginally lower amount of feeding damage in IPM compared to preventative plots (P = 0.07). Microbial Decomposition Activity - Microbial Extracellular Enzymes: In PA and NY, we have assessed enzyme activity; these enzymes are indicators of microbial decomposition activity. For PA, we have just completed these assays, but have yet to analyze the data. For NY, we have completed and analyzed some of the assays. We found that the activities of all five enzyme measured were higher midseason than end of season and the activity of acid phosphatase was higher in preventative pest management plots than in IPM or control plots. At this time point, the difference between preventative, IPM and control plots is only the presence of the insecticidal and fungicidal seed treatment (present in preventative plots, not the others). Other ongoing work in turfgrass in the Wickings lab has exhibited a similar pattern showing that microbial enzyme activities often increase in soils following the application of neonicotinoids (Bray and Wickings, in prep) suggesting that microbes may be capable of using some pesticides as substrates. Yield: In PA, yield was not influenced by pest management treatments. In NY, we also observed no differences in estimated crop yield among the different pest management practices. For both states, these results suggest that the use of preventive, calendar-based pest management practices have been unwarranted in the first two years of our study.
Publications
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Fennell, L., Tooker, J., Wickings, K. 2018. Pest management tactics have seasonal impacts on the biological control potential of entomopathogenic fungi. Paper presented at the joint meeting of the Entomology Society of America, the Entomology Society of Canada, and the Entomology Society of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Fennell, L., Tooker, J., Wickings, K. 2018. Quantifying the impacts of preventative pest management. Cornell University 7th Annual Department of Entomology Symposium conducted at Cornell AgriTech in Geneva, NY
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Fennell, L., Tooker, J., Wickings, K. 2019. Pest management tactics have seasonal impacts on the biological control potential of entomopathogenic fungi. Cornell University 8th Annual Department of Entomology Symposium conducted at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Pearsons, K., E. Rowen, K. Wickings, R. Smith, and J. F. Tooker. Unintended consequences of pest management on soil ecosystems. Annual Meeting of the Eastern Branch of the Entomological Society of America, Blacksburg, VA, March 2019.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Tooker, J. F., and K. Wickings. 2018. Exploring Soil Biological Health and Pest Management Trade Offs to Maximize Crop Productivity. 2018 Climate and Agroecology Project Directors Meeting. USDA NIFA, Washington, D.C. 6-7 December 2018.
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Progress 04/01/17 to 03/31/18
Outputs
Target Audience: Farmers, other agricultural professionals, extension and NRCS personnel, soil health and IPM practitioners, soil scientists, agronomists, and other agricultural scientists. Changes/Problems:For the 2017 season, we experienced some difficulty getting cover crops established and then terminated. Because we were notified that our grant was funded so close to the growing season, it was a challenge to get our cover crop established in PA then get enough growth to make a difference for soil quality. Then given a very wet spring, we had challenges terminating the cover crop. These problems were not encountered during planting for 2018. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Our project has provide training and professional development opportunities for the graduate and undergraduate students that are implementing the research and collecting samples and data. Our plots have also been featured in tours of our research farms; attendees of such tours are agricultural professionals and farmers. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We have shared results orally with visitors to field tours, but most of our data yet to be collected. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We will collect data in the soybean portion of our field experiments.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
We completed our first field season, during whichwe grew corn after a spring established cover crop in PA and hay in NY. In spring of 2018, in PA, we established soybeans after a winter cover crop, while in NY we established soybeans. Druing the 2017 field season, we scouted for soil dwelling andfoliar insect pests and pathogens. We alsosampled soil to establish a baseline for soil health metrics. We conducted soil nutrient analysis at the end of the season on all plots to evaluate changes based on pest management treatment. We sampled for soil biological function in August and October of 2017. We also measured cropestablishment and yield in all plots of all field.
Publications
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