Project Overview

Reports

Commodities

• Agronomic: hay, medics/alfalfa

Target Pests

Practices

• Pest Management: chemical control, cultural control, monitoring/scouting, pesticide resistance management

Alfalfa is a valuable perennial forage crop grown throughout the United States. Obtaining high yields of quality forage, stand longevity, and animal well-being are top priorities for alfalfa farmers and others involved in alfalfa production and protection. However, multiple diseases and insect pests threaten alfalfa production and can even harm animals consuming it. Pest management strategies include resistant alfalfa varieties, pesticides, and cultural practices. Foliar fungicide use is becoming increasingly popular on alfalfa, which can increase risk of pathogen resistance, especially with modern fungicide formulations. Alfalfa weevil has shown resistance to pyrethroid insecticides in several U.S. states. Furthermore, climate pattern changes can complicate risks associated with disease and insect pests. Managing disease and insect pests in alfalfa begins with regular field scouting and properly identifying disease and insect pest issues in a timely fashion. Improper identification and pest sampling techniques may lead to inappropriate and costly management attempts.

In order to help meet these challenges, an alfalfa pest management working group will be created to determine top disease and insect pest priorities, and to inform new and easily-updatable educational resources and research tools. Thus, the goal of this Working Group proposal is to gather input from a multidisciplinary team of alfalfa pest management experts to inform development of an interactive alfalfa insect pest and disease management encyclopedia and an alfalfa disease severity assessment training tool. To accomplish this goal and address NCIPMC priorities and desired outcomes, this proposal has three objectives. 

The first objective is for an interdisciplinary Alfalfa Pest Management (APM) Working Group to convene and develop priorities for disease and insect pest management outputs. The APM will consist of both plant pathologists and entomologists, who will also review outputs from the second and third objectives. The second objective is to develop a searchable alfalfa disease and insect pest encyclopedia with life cycle illustrations and make them accessible through the Crop Protection Network (CPN). The encyclopedia will contain the most important diseases and insect pests as determined by the APM Working Group. Life cycles of diseases and pests will be illustrated by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Nutrient and Pest Management (NPM) Program. The third objective is to create an alfalfa disease severity assessment training tool hosted by the CPN to aid researchers. This will allow those engaged in research or those responsible for alfalfa management to increase their ability to estimate disease on alfalfa foliage when determining fungicide efficacy. 

This project has a direct benefit to alfalfa farmers, agriculture professionals, and researchers in the North Central region and elsewhere by providing current and timely Extension material to aid in the identification and management of alfalfa pests, to gain an understanding of pest life cycles, and tools to help researchers accurately quantify alfalfa disease severity. To measure the value and impact of this project and resources produced, we will use several metrics supplied by the Crop Protection Network.

1) Alfalfa Pest Management Working Group develops priorities for disease and insect pest management outputs;

2) Develop a searchable alfalfa disease and insect pest encyclopedia with life cycle illustrations; and

3) Create alfalfa disease severity assessment training.