A bug's life

As senior IPM manager at Costa Farms’ North Carolina farm, Bug leads the charge with beneficial insects — or the good bugs — toward more sustainable pest management practices as part of the company’s evolving IPM program. To date, Opela and her team’s efforts have resulted in a 50% reduction in the use of pesticides at Costa’s North Carolina farm.

Because it focuses on long-term prevention and sustainability, IPM — or integrated pest management — makes a lot of sense for growers throughout the horticulture industry. As the costs for labor and inputs increase, resistance issues arise from improper chemical rotations, and fewer products are coming to market, growers are seeking alternative means to managing healthier crops.

And as a saying that Opela picked up from picked up this saying from Suzanne Wainwright-Evens goes, it’s tough to build a resistance to being eaten.

“The use of beneficial insects is just one tool in our toolbox,” Opela says, who adds that a well-rounded IPM program also includes facets such as holistic cultural practices, nutrition and maximizing plant health. “And while we’ve reduced our use of conventional pesticides considerably, we still will spray when other methods fail … but it’s no longer our first mode of action.

“Our goal is not to have a Silent Spring in the greenhouse,” she adds. “I would like to say that we’re never going to have aphids, but even with a biological program, we’re going to have aphids. Our goal is to manage the levels of pests that we have and affect plant health … not just wipe [pest insects] off the face of the earth.”

And that’s a key component to understanding this process — it’s not beneficial insects versus spraying, says Cody Seals, the U.S. product manager at Beneficial Insectary, a vendor who has worked closely with Opela to establish Costa Farm’s program.

“People get caught up on whether they’re going to use beneficials or they’re going to spray,” Seals says. “And that’s not the case. If you can get by without spraying, that’s incredible. But when you introduce beneficials, that doesn’t mean you have to stop spraying. You just need to start spraying differently when your goal is to reduce your chemical load.”

Opela uses beneficial insects to keep pest populations in check. And when combined with fewer chemical applications, they help alleviate plant health stressors. As a result, this natural mode of action assists in cultivating healthier, hardier stock because plant material becomes less vulnerable to pest pressure and more disease resistance, she says.

“I have nothing against insecticides and fungicides, and they have their place,” she says. “But from my experience, I do believe that biologicals can produce a healthier crop.”

As the senior technical services manager at BioWorks, a vendor of beneficial insects, Michael Brownbridge has worked closely with Opela at the North Carolina farm. He’s been impressed with the success Opela has experienced with integrating beneficial organisms. Persistence and determination are hallmarks of an effective IPM manager, and Opela is eager to learn from her mistakes and reach out for guidance to improve and persevere.

“Experience breeds success, and you only get experienced by trying,” Brownbridge says. “Working with Michelle, I’ve noticed a willingness to learn from her mistakes and improve her production practices to become a better grower. As a result, she’s excellent at what she does.”

Opela and her team’s progress in North Carolina will undoubtedly impact Costa’s extensive horticulture network. A global company and one of the world’s largest growers, Jose Costa Sr. founded Costa Farms in 1961, first growing tomatoes and calamondin citrus, then expanding into more than 1,500 varieties of ornamental bedding plants, flowering potted plants, container perennials, and potted foliage on 5,200 acres, the bulk of which is covered. Headquartered just southwest of Miami, Costa operates five facilities throughout the Sunshine State, along with operations in Trenton, South Carolina; Ashville, North Carolina; and more than 1,000 acres in the Dominican Republic, which serves as the source of the mother plants for many of the company’s popular houseplants. The grower serves a variety of big-box retail and grocery chains, as well as independent garden centers and other growers.

Opela joined Costa Farms in 2014, but her path to annual plant growing and beneficial organisms was indirect. A New York state native, Opela attended Cornell University and earned a Bachelor of Science degree with a concentration in marine biology. After graduation, she logged stints with Alaska fisheries and researched sea grasses and sharks in Australia. Still, financial considerations forced a career adjustment from marine biology and brought her back to the United States, specifically Florida.

“In college, I had worked at greenhouses and really liked growing plants,” she says. “Costa Farms had a research and development position open up in Miami. While I wasn’t entirely qualified, I must have interviewed well and got hired.”

Opela focused on that for two years and then moved to a position that assisted the sales team by working with young growers. She then pursued an opportunity at Costa’s North Carolina farm to run that facility’s IPM program. At Costa Farms, the IPM team works closely with growers, overseeing pest and disease management, which is a big task.

“It never stops,” Opela says of her team’s vigilance. “You always have insect and disease pressure regardless of the time of year.”

While pest and disease pressure vary depending on a region’s climate and ecology, some pressures remain universal. For example, Opela says managing aphid populations is her number-one challenge — particularly problematic are foxglove aphids — as well as keeping thrips, flea beetle and spider mite populations in check.

It’s important to note that because pest and disease pressure vary from region to region and the time of year, specific pest pressure and beneficial applications can be an apples-to-oranges comparison. However, Opela recommends five core principles for growers seeking to incorporate helpful insects into their IPM programs.

Establish a scout team

Scouts are the bones of any successful beneficial program. Scouts are on the proverbial frontlines, out in the fields, seeking evidence of plant stress and pest pressure and looking for proof that the armies of beneficial insects are doing their jobs. They are literally an IPM manager’s eyes and ears.

While most individuals can be trained in insect identification and plant physiology, there are specific intangible soft skills and characteristics that IPM managers want in their scout team members.

“Before you make any changes to your current program, you need to have a team of scouts trained on what to look for out in the field, what to observe and what type of information they should be collecting,” Opela says. “It’s important to have a team tracking your insect populations because you need to know sooner than later if your [beneficial] program is not working and whether you’ll need to pivot.”

Not everyone is suited for scout work. “As you build this team, you want people who enjoy working alone,” Opela says. “And you want individuals who won’t mind the monotony of the work, who will be OK and happy doing the same things day in and day out.”

Attention to detail is another crucial characteristic for scout team members. “You’re looking at super-tiny, small objects, so you need people who pay attention to the details,” Opela says. “This may be the most important skill set [in a scout team member].”

Don’t underestimate the importance of a solid scout team when managing a beneficial program, Seals says. “If you’re not scouting, then you’re essentially blind, and you are just making random guesses [about program direction],” he says. “[An effective scout time] helps you establish a baseline as to what the tolerable levels are for pests, and when [pests] have exceeded those thresholds.”

Understand chemical usage

Chemical residue can have a devastating effect on beneficial organisms. Therefore, a program leader must fully understand what’s being used at their facility and with suppliers from whom they receive plant material.

“A common mistake is underestimating residual [pesticide] activity before deploying beneficials,” Opela says. “Sometimes that residual activity can still have a kick to it — especially when [growing] under cover — and will impact the good bugs you’re putting out there.”

BioWorks’ Brownbride says misjudging chemical use when managing beneficial insects is akin to sending soldiers on a suicide mission. “Many ornamental greenhouses grow from propagated materials sourced from around the world,” he says. “They may not adhere to strict quality standards and will often spray the heck out of plants to eliminate any and all pests [prior to shipment]. Older chemistry residue can last for weeks, which can not only negatively affect a biological program but also increases the risk of resistance.”

Opela recommends asking vendors and suppliers for chemical-usage records to mitigate this risk. In addition, beneficial vendors can provide compatibility charts that will advise on various active ingredients and their compatibility with the biological agents to be used for a grower’s program.

Start small and build confidence

One of the greatest misconceptions about using beneficials is that it’s a magic bullet and that a grower can abandon their conventional chemical program and go all in with biological control agents.

“A lot of people what jump right in, but I recommend starting out small with your program,” Opela says. “Get comfortable with using beneficials and build from there because there are ways to do it correctly, and there are ways to do it incorrectly, which can be costly.”

Opela recommends initiating a program with a “gateway” beneficial, such as nematodes. Beneficial nematodes are tiny roundworms that move in the soil profile and are commonly used to control thrips and fungus gnat populations. They’re easy to work with and are relatively hardy. When applied correctly, they can kill their host within a few days. From there, Opela recommends moving on to predatory mites, which feed on various plant-feeding mites, like spider mites.

After gaining success and confidence, Opela encourages growers to try banker plant systems, which are inexpensive, self-contained, sustainable mini-rearing systems that provide a continual source of beneficial parasitic insects that disperse into surrounding crops in search of their next meal. The method assists growers by eliminating the lag between detecting an infestation and receiving a shipment of beneficials from a supplier.

Mistakes will happen when getting acclimated to using beneficial insects. Therefore, Seals says engaging on a small scale with a proven solution is most helpful to growers starting out. “Choose a specific target and focus on one thing at a time,” he says. “For example, your first time out, focus on controlling thrips in your hanging baskets instead of saying I’m applying [beneficials] to everything.”

Utilize technology

Throughout agriculture and horticulture, drones and AI are being applied to analyze disease pressure and plant health and, in some instances, deploy beneficial insects to high pest-pressure zones. While this technology’s potential is exciting for growers, it may not be practical — from logistical and cost perspectives — for small- to medium-sized growers and their fledgling beneficial programs.

However, there are high-tech methods growers can employ to enhance a beneficial program’s success while reducing labor and strengthening best practices. And it starts with collecting and analyzing information, especially data cultivated in the field by the scout team. “You need to make sure your team is good at collecting information,” Opela says. “You need to document and track what’s happening in the crops.” A grower must identify which beneficials are working, and perhaps most importantly, when are they most impactful on the pests they’re targeting, she adds.

In the past, though, much of this recordkeeping at Costa Farms was collected and processed by hand, transferring written records and inputting them into a computer program for analysis. While important, it was also time-consuming and labor-intensive.

However, apps for phones and mobile devices that assist in this recordkeeping are available to growers. They cut down on the data transfer rate and compile information into a format managers can use to analyze their program strengths and weaknesses. Fortunately for Opela, Costa Farms developed its own data management app.

“It’s very handy,” she says. “Prior to [the app], we were just using pen and paper [to record data] and then go through with a highlighter to [identify] what was important and what wasn’t. Now, with the app, we can quickly filter everything out. We can take a chunk of time, select a plant and watch what happens to pest levels in that crop over time.

“For quick tracking and to see where the problems are, it’ll tell you in about two seconds,” she adds. “So, with all of the data [the scout team] collects — the nematodes, the Atheta (Dalotia coriaria), the parasitoids, the banker plant systems, every single [beneficial species] we use, there are huge opportunities to dive in deep [with the data], and I think we’ve barely skimmed the surface.”

Commercial data management apps, such as IPM Scoutek (ipmscoutek.com) and iPM app (koppertus.com), are available to growers to track pest trends, applications and thresholds.

Partner with quality vendors

Beyond supplying quality beneficial insects, the roles vendors play in a program’s success can’t be stressed enough, Opela says. Cost is just one factor, and the best vendors are looking out for the grower’s interests and offer vital support services and quality products.

“Yes, cost is a consideration because some of these [beneficial insects] can be expensive, and depending on the size of an operation, that [budgetary consideration] can have a big impact,” she says. “But there are factors that go beyond being financially competitive. Will this vendor provide us with a lot of technical support? Will they supply us with great products consistently? Will they go outside their range and connect us with vendors and experts who can be helpful to us? And for me, the mark of a good vendor is someone who is available and responds quickly to phone calls, emails, texts … whatever.”

Beneficial Insectary’s Seals says good vendors engage in conversations with their clients to determine their needs better. “Look for someone willing to work with you to prove that their product is working. And if not, then why?” he says. “And look for someone willing to build that relationship and isn’t just trying to come in, sell something, and then move on.”

A quality vendor goes beyond the sale and provides clients with support around using their products and even their competitors’ products.

“A vendor will want to provide the necessary data and education on how to use them, when to use them, and what to use them with,” BioWorks’ Brownbridge says. “They’ll also be transparent and offer recommendations that don’t always include their products, but [suggest] a competitor’s product if that’s a better fit. That’s the big differentiator.”

Mike Zawacki is a freelance writer with nearly two decades of experience covering various aspects of the green industry.