What was it all about?

This project, which ran from 2013 to 2016, funded the employment of a pineapple industry technical officer to investigate management options for major pest, disease and weed threats.

The goal was to develop contemporary integrated pest and disease management systems for the industry, with the investigation of alternative products and strategies to current pesticides.

Throughout the life of the project, the project conducted trials to investigate the potential of:

• A range of nematicides to manage root-knot nematodes
• Insecticides to control pineapple mealybug
• Pre-emergent herbicides for effective weed control
• Root-promoting substances for use during early plant growth stages to establish strong, healthy plants
• Plastic mulch, which was found to have potential to control weeds, reduce herbicide application, improve crop growth and increase fruit size
• New trapping systems to monitor symphylid populations, small white centipede-like arthropods which live in the soil and feed on roots.

The technical officer participated at regional study group meetings and prepared articles for The Pineapple Press to keep growers informed of progress.

It was expected that the data generated from the project’s trials would assist in the registration of new pesticides and adoption of new management systems for the pineapple industry, though further work is required before industry recommendations can be made on the use of the above products and approaches.