Anthony and Angela Tringham, who grow heirloom tomatoes commercially under the brand Curious Croppers, have two main greenhouses in Clevedon, Auckland, where they produce their fruit.
This season, in one of the greenhouses, they have shifted tobacco seedlings in pots on which the mirid Engytatus nicotianae has been established to test its efficacy as a biocontrol, particularly against the tomato-potato psyllid, but also against leaf miner, whitefly and possibly more.
"I meant to put tobacco plants and engytatus in the other greenhouse too, but never got around to it," Anthony says. "And that's the greenhouse where I have now had a whitefly explosion. And that could just be a coincidence. But last year, we had the engytatus in, and we had no problem with TPP, and we always have problems with it in November, December, and January. And that could be a coincidence, too, I'm not calling it. But when I pulled out the tomatoes last year, I left the tobacco plants in one greenhouse, and the engytatus continued to breed on them all winter. And what I have harvested from that greenhouse this year, that's the cleanest crop I have ever grown. No whitefly at all. It's pretty exciting."
The tomato-potato psyllid (TPP), Bactericera cockerelli, is a serious pest of all solanaceous crops that has had a devastating impact on commercial growers of tomatoes and potatoes (and tamarillos and capsicums too), as well as a significant impact on home growers, since it was first detected in New Zealand in 2006.
Read more at stuff.co.nz