/24-7PressRelease/ - UNIVERSITY PARK, PA, June 14, 2008 - Christmas tree growers, agricultural crop producers, turfgrass managers, fruit growers and homeowners from across the state can find the latest pest and pest management information by dialing the Pennsylvania IPM Program's 1-800 PENN IPM toll-free hotline.
Callers to the hotline can receive information such as recent phermone trap capture counts for their region, up-to-date disease development information, as well as tips on pest management tactics from the Pennsylvania IPM Program.
IPM, or integrated pest management, aims to manage pests -- such as insects, diseases, weeds and animals -- by combining physical, biological and chemical tactics that are safe, profitable and environmentally compatible.
Information on such crops as Christmas trees, sweet corn, potatoes, apples, tomatoes, as well as fly control and animal IPM are included on the hotline. Also available is information on soybean rust, a new fungal disease that threatens economic losses to soybeans because it decreases yield and increases fungicide application costs. While Pennsylvania farmers will probably find their risk of soybean rust low to minimal, the disease still has the potential to cause significant losses in individual fields.
Messages on the automated hotline are updated frequently during the growing season -- sometimes as often as daily during critical management periods -- and are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Pest management specialists from the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, Penn State's Departments of Entomology and Plant Pathology and Penn State Cooperative Extension contribute their time and expertise to keep the information current and useful.
The Pennsylvania IPM program is a collaboration between the Pennsylvania State University and the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture aimed at promoting integrated pest management in both agricultural and urban situations. For more information, contact the program at (814) 865-2839, or Web site http://paipm.cas.psu.edu. To view our archived news releases, see Web site http://paipm.cas.psu.edu/newsrelease.html.
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