January 2025 First Friday with Florida First Detector

Recap of January 2025 First Friday with Florida First Detector

In this month’s webinar, we covered invasive caterpillars that feed on vegetable crops. Florida’s agriculture industry is home to a wide variety of high value vegetable production. We are a top producer of tomatoes, bell peppers, cabbage and many other delicious veggies. Our mild winters allow us to grow vegetables at times of the year when other states have snow! The profitability of Florida’s vegetable farms could be affected by invasive pests including caterpillars. We talked about three high priority caterpillar pests of vegetables, Old World bollworm (Helicoverpa armigera), tomato leafminer (Phthorimaea absoluta), and false codling moth (Thaumatotibia leucotreta).

The Old World bollworm is a major pest of lots of vegetables. It is native to the eastern hemisphere where it is found throughout Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia. This species has since spread to South America and the Caribbean where it causes major issues in vegetable production. This closer proximity of this species to Florida makes us even more concerned about it accidentally being introduced to the state. We currently monitor for this species throughout Florida with extensive trapping programs. The Old World bollworm was intercepted in a trap in Florida in 2015, but no additional moths have been found since.

Tomato leafminer is a serious of tomatoes and other solanaceous crops. The larvae can defoliate the plants leading to lower yields. They can also feed inside the fruit making it unmarketable. This pest is native to South America, but has spread to Europe, Africa and Asia where it causes a lot of problems. This species is not currently found in the continental U.S.

False codling moth is a pest of vegetables as well as fruits. The larvae feed inside the fruit and vegetables making it hard to detect damage until they are cut open. False codling moth is native to Africa and is not known to occur in the U.S. Shipments of produce that contained this moth species has been turned away at U.S. boarders on multiple occasions and we continue to be on the lookout for this species.

While there are a lot of resources devoted to monitoring for these three species across the state, another set of eyes can’t hurt. If you are seeing unusual damage in your farm or garden, don’t hesitate to submit a sample to your local county extension office.

Resources on Invasive Caterpillars on Vegetables

Want to watch the recording?

What is the upcoming schedule?

We are meeting online via Zoom from 12:00PM-1:00PM on the First Friday of every month from Sept 2022-Aug 2025. Maybe longer too! Please visit this blog for registration information and the upcoming schedule for Sept. 2024-2025.

Questions?

Contact Dr. Morgan Pinkerton, morgan0402@ufl.edu

Visit the Florida First Detector Website