One concern for every vegetable grower is finding solutions to pest management problems quickly. An example would be anthracnose of watermelon. You recognize the disease or you have had it officially diagnosed. Or perhaps you anticipate this disease every year and want to start applications of a fungicide early in the season. Where do you find recommended products and application details?
For years, vegetable growers have reached for the Midwest Vegetable Guide for Commercial Growers (known in Indiana as the ID-56). This annually updated guide includes disease, insect and weed recommendations as well as detailed info about such subjects as food safety, soil fertility and organic production. Starting in 2020, growers may choose to reach for their phones instead of a hard copy. While the hard copy is still available at the same $15 price, the guide is now searchable from data phones, tables, laptops and desktop computers. Read on for details.
To use the new online version of the ID-56, go to the URL mwveguide.org. There you will find a choice of ‘pick my crop’, ‘pick my pest’ or ‘pick my control measure’ (Figure 1). Most searches will start with crop. For example, type in watermelon or select watermelon from the drop-down menu. Then click next.
Figure 1: When viewed on a data phone, the home screen to the Midwest Vegetable Production Guide will look like this.
You will then be asked to choose a pest. Either type in anthracnose or choose it from the drop-down menu.
When you click next, you will be given a list of pest control measures. The screen shot below is a partial list.
Figure 2: Screen shot of partial list of controls for anthracnose of watermelon from the MW Vegetable Production Guide.
Note by clicking the pest information or product information boxes, they will expand. When expanded, the pest information includes important biology information. The Cabrio information, when expanded, includes application rates, restricted-entry interval (REI) and pre-harvest interval (PHI).
Figure 3: Screen shot of partial list of products showing the ‘EXPORT TO PDF’ button.
When the orange ‘show more’ button is clicked, additional information about Cabrio is shown such as greenhouse use and bee precaution information.
At the completion of each search, an orange button at the bottom of screen will appear that says ‘EXPORT AS .PDF”. The resulting PDF can be saved and printed (Figure 3).
Many more types of searches can be conducted. For example, it is possible to search by multiple pests for the same crop or enter a product plus crops to find possible uses of a product.
If you have further questions, please contact Dan Egel, (812) 886-0198; egel@purdue.edu
We thank the following organizations for financial help: a grant from the North-Central IPM Center provided to the Great Lakes Vegetable Working Group; a grant from the MSU Extension Agriculture and Agribusiness Institute Project GREEEN Research Fund; a gift from the Michigan Vegetable Council; a gift from the Indiana Vegetable Growers Association; a gift from the Kansas Vegetable Growers. In addition, we thank the following individuals for entering information into the new format: Elizabeth Maynard, Marissa Schuh, Michael Reinke.