AGLL 2702 - Horticultural Entomology: Food Crops

In AGLL 2702 (Horticultural Entomology: Food Crops) focus is on the primary insect and mite pests associated with vegetables, fruits, and herbs. For all key pest groups students will learn to identify the insects and their associated injury so they can assess damage potential in field situations. Students will understand best management practices for these pests and learn how to locate available resources that can assist in handling specific pest problems.

This is a four-week asynchronous course. There is no official meeting time and during the week students are able to set their own schedule of class participation. All lectures, quizzes, recommended readings, and weekly project assignments will be released at the beginning of this course. Due dates of assignments will be staggered with all to be completed by the end of this course.

Topics to be presented in five main sections:

• Section One: Insects that affect seedling plants (cutworms, root maggots); generalist pests (earwigs, slugs)
• Section Two: Insects that chew on leaves of plants (caterpillars, leaf beetles, grasshoppers)
• Section Three: Insects that directly damage fruit (codling moth, fruit flies), corn earworm and relatives, root/crown borers, stem borers, leafminers.
• Section Four: Insects that feed with sucking mouthparts (aphids, whiteflies, true bugs)
• Section Five: Psyllids, leafhoppers, spider mites, thrips. Insect vectored plant diseases to vegetables, fruits, and flowers.

Additional courses in this series are AGLL 2701 (Horticultural Entomology Introduction) and AGLL 2703 (Horticultural Entomology: Landscape Plants), which are offered sequentially. AGLL 2701 or an instructor override, is required to enroll in either AGLL 2702 or AGLL 2703.