Red spider mite on tomato -Malawi: Tetranychus evansi; Stone wash
Publication: PlantwisePlus Knowledge Bank
Pest Management Decision Guides
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Prevention
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Remove and burn all crop residues after harvest.
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Do not recycle stakes or use boiling water to treat stakes before re-using.
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Interplant tomato with repellent non-host crops such as onion and garlic.
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Plant new crops away from infested fields.
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Avoid movement of tools and animals from infested fields to new crops/clean fields.
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Weeds in solanaceae family (e.g eggplants, tobacco, potato) act as hosts, remove these plants
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Mites are spread by wind - consider windbreaks or barrier crops between fields to protect tomato crop.
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Conserve and use naturally occuring predatory mites such as Phytoseiulus sp.
Monitoring
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Spider mites are difficult to see with the naked eye and you may need to use a hand lens or look for webbing on the underside of the leaves.
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Look for tiny, reddish, spider-like mites underneath the leaves. Start to control when there is an average of 8-12 mites per leaf.
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Look for bruises on the young and big fruits including the stems.
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Check for stunted growrth, wilting, matted underside of the leaves, fine webbing, yellowing and whitening of the leaves. Loss of leaves.
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Look for feeding punctures that cause yellowing or whitening of leaves followed by desiccation and leaf fall. Severe infestation can cause death of whole plant.
Direct Control
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Remove and burn all infested plants. Usually infestation starts with a few plants (a hotspot) and spreads with time. Uprooting and burning hotspot plants can therefore help.
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Spray a mixture of 1 teaspoon of liquid soap in 4L of water or 50g (one quarter bar of 250g) soap in 20L of water.
Restrictions
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Use personal protective equipment when handling and applying pesticides, follow the label recommendations.
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Do not eat, drink or smoke when mixing or applying pesticides.
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Since mite populations are initially restricted to some plants, spot spraying (spraying only attacked plants) is usually effective
Direct Control
Apply propargite (Comite EC) at a rate of 5ml in10L of water when pest appears.
WHO class III (Slightly hazardous). Spray early in the morning or late in the afternoon. Re-spray after 2 - 5 days. Observe a re-entry interval of 3 days (with protective clothing), otherwise 21 days. Observe a pre-harvest interval of 21 days.
Apply profenofos(eg. polytrin C 44EC) at the rate of 12ml in 10L of water when pest appears. Apply benzoato eg snowmetin or ProclaimFit at rate of 1ml/L of water.
Both WHO class II (Moderately hazardous). Spray early in the morning or late in the afternoon. Observe a re-entry interval of 1 day and a pre-harvest interval of 7 days.
Indexing Terms
Descriptors
- acaricides
- arthropod pests
- aubergines
- barriers
- biological control
- biological control agents
- burning
- chemical control
- control
- cultural control
- cypermethrin
- extension
- hot water treatment
- mite control
- monitoring
- natural enemies
- pest control
- pest management
- pesticides
- pests
- physical control
- plant pests
- potatoes
- predators
- predatory arthropods
- profenofos
- propargite
- soaps
- sugarcane
- sweet potatoes
- tobacco
- tomatoes
- weed control
- weeds
- windbreaks
Organism Descriptors
Identifiers
Geographical Locations
Broader Terms
- Arachnida
- arthropods
- invertebrates
- animals
- eukaryotes
- Convolvulaceae
- Solanales
- eudicots
- angiosperms
- Spermatophyta
- plants
- Ipomoea
- Acari
- Solanaceae
- Nicotiana
- Phytoseiidae
- Mesostigmata
- mites
- Saccharum
- Poaceae
- Poales
- commelinids
- monocotyledons
- Solanum
- Prostigmata
- Tetranychidae
- Tetranychus
- Africa
- ACP Countries
- Anglophone Africa
- Commonwealth of Nations
- East Africa
- Africa South of Sahara
- Least Developed Countries
- low Human Development Index countries
- low income countries
- SADC Countries
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Pest Management Decision Guides
Pest Management Decision Guide: Green and Yellow List
Applicable geographic locations
Africa, Malawi
Copyright
© CABI 2016. This article is published under aCreative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0)Published under a CC-BY-SA 4.0 licence
History
Issue publication date: 1 January 2016
Published online: 15 December 2016
Language
English
Authors
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