I gave a talk yesterday at the Vermont Vegetable and Berry Growers Association Annual Meeting about Gemelle and Chase’s recent lab results. The latest news is that swede midge has made it to the eastern side of Vermont to Norwich, VT and is in the Connecticut river valley.
Within Vermont, the midge has also been reported in Chittenden, Addison, and Lamoille counties. Please email me if you have any updated news about its distribution.
Thank you Josh Brown from the UVM Communications Department for the nice article featuring our work and the seriousness of the swede midge invasion.
We are excited to have just received a City Market Co-op patronage Seedling Grant to fund more of our work on swede midge.
The money comes from City Market members that forget to cash in their refunds as Co-op members. We thank the Board and members for their support. What a cool way to work on the food system!
This is a signal that the local food system is now starting to be concerned enough about swede midge to support research on the solutions! This grant will fund a study whether is a relationship between the number of midge larvae and damage indices.
As testimony to the persistence of Colorado potato beetle as a global scourge, apparently the Ukranians are now calling the Russian separatists, “Koloradi”.
Here is the story:
http://www.rferl.org/content/ukraine-colorado-beetle-separatists/25365793.html
We are pleased to welcome the newest addition to the lab – Kristian Brevik! Kristian did his undergrad degree at Hampshire College, where he studied the domestication of a small mammal. He also happens to speak a few languages, including some Chinese! In his other life, he actually is a sculpture artist interested in insect form. Welcome Kristian!
