1st Place: Physical exclusion of apple pests using hail-netting in Minnesota orchards

Apple growers that seek to practice more sustainable pest management compared to traditional pesticide use must do so without increased risks to marketable yield and profits. Physical exclusion of pests is a tactic that has been studied in multiple fruit crops, including apple. The primary pests in Minnesota include: apple maggot (Rhagoletis pomonella) and codling moth (Cydia pomonella), along with several minor pests such as the red-banded leafroller (Argyrotaenia velitunana). The goal of our study is to examine the use of commercially available hail-netting (Drape-Net, N. America) as a pest exclusion strategy. In 2021 and 2022, we assessed the efficacy of hail-netting by trapping pest species in netted and open plots in production systems with two levels of pesticide use from petal fall until harvest. We used a linear mixed-effects model to examine the effect of netting and insecticide use on insect trap catch. Fixed effects in this model included netting, insecticide level, and insect number; while random effects included replication and time. Our findings show that all three pest species were significantly reduced inside the netting (p