Agragene Expands Program to Help Farmers Control Fruit Flys

Apr 15, 2021

Agragene, Inc., a biotechnology company focused on suppressing invasive crop pests using biological insect control technology, announced today that it has expanded its SentinelTM program to help growers monitor spotted wing drosophila (SWD) populations year-round by trapping in natural border habitats surrounding agricultural fields.

Agragene is assisting growers in observing where SWD take refuge, feed and breed while tracking how their relative populations shift over time. Agragene has hired Peerbolt Crop Management (PCM) to provide this service to all interested growers. The Agragene Regional SWD Report is published in the Small Fruit Update newsletter provided by the Northwest Berry Foundation on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. Growers can sign-up for free at Growers - Agragene to obtain comprehensive SWD reports including insights from Agragene’s entomologists and the PCM team.

The announcement comes as many fruit growers reported their toughest season yet combatting the hardy and damaging SWD, which arrived in the U.S. in 2008. SWD feed on ripening fruit causing extensive economic injury. Agragene’s technologies target SWD with a biocontrol platform to help growers monitor and more naturally manage the pest.

“Given the explosion of this fly population, we are pleased with the strong demand and positive feedback from growers on our initial trap reports throughout Oregon’s Northern Willamette Valley,” said Clyde Shores, Agragene Chief Business Officer. “We now service more areas in central and southern Oregon and will expand to additional regions in Oregon, Washington and California to assist as many growers as possible. “

“We’ve been partnering with fruit growers to manage SWD since it showed up in the Pacific Northwest in 2009 and have developed a comprehensive data collection and reporting system. Now, with Agragene’s expertise and resources supporting this greatly expanded monitoring program we can give growers the field-by-field information they need to make more precise, effective and data-driven decisions about SWD control,” said Tom Peerbolt, Co-founder of PCM and Director at The Northwest Berry Foundation.

About Agragene

Agragene is a biotechnology company focused on suppressing invasive crop pests using biological insect control technology. Agragene is committed to working with growers to establish new, more effective integrated pest management (IPM) solutions. In addition to the SentinelTM insect monitoring service, Agragene is commercializing sustainable Biocontrol-as-a-Service using biological crop pest control agents that are non-polluting and thus environmentally safe and acceptable. Biocontrol reduces the use of environmentally unsafe chemicals. This encourages a more natural ecological balance providing a safe harbor for beneficial insects, such as bees and ladybugs. Insecticide use is decreased which enhances the effectiveness of IPM. Agragene has initially focused the platform on SWD and plans to expand to other insect crop pests in the future.

About Peerbolt Crop Management

Peerbolt Crop Management

Peerbolt Crop Management (PCM) began in 1992. Since its inception, PCM’s goal has been to facilitate the sustainable production of horticultural crops in the Northwest through IPM (Integrated Pest Management) based field services, on-farm research, consulting and information dissemination. For 28 years, we have closely collaborated with growers, researchers, industry members and government agencies, attaining a unique industry perspective and promoting sustainable production methods.

About Northwest Berry Foundation

Northwest Berry Foundation (nwberryfoundation.org)

The Northwest Berry Foundation exists to strengthen the NW berry industry through on-farm research, grower education and information sharing, and reducing food waste. The Small Fruit Update is a weekly resource for the Northwest berry industry. It features regional crop reports, industry news, pest management, research and industry events. The Small Fruit Update is free to all readers, made possible by the dedicated sponsorships from regional fruit commissions and councils across the Northwest and North America.

Source : agragene

Video: Spring 2026 weather outlook for Wisconsin; What an early-arriving El Niño could mean

Northeast Wisconsin is a small corner of the world, but our weather is still affected by what happens across the globe.

That includes in the equatorial Pacific, where changes between El Niño and La Niña play a role in the weather here -- and boy, have there been some abrupt changes as of late.

El Niño and La Niña are the two phases of what is collectively known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation, or ENSO for short. These are the swings back and forth from unusually warm to unusually cold sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean along the equator.

Since this past September, we have been in a weak La Niña, which means water temperatures near the Eastern Pacific equator have been cooler than usual. That's where we're at right now.

Even last fall, the long-term outlook suggested a return to neutral conditions by spring and potentially El Niño conditions by summer.

But there are some signs this may be happening faster than usual, which could accelerate the onset of El Niño.

Over the last few weeks, unusually strong bursts of westerly winds farther west in the Pacific -- where sea surface temperatures are warmer than average -- have been observed. There is a chance that this could accelerate the warming of those eastern Pacific waters and potentially push us into El Niño sooner than usual.

If we do enter El Nino by spring -- which we'll define as the period of March, April and May -- there are some long-term correlations with our weather here in Northeast Wisconsin.

Looking at a map of anomalously warm weather, most of the upper Great Lakes doesn't show a strong correlation, but in general, the northern tiers of the United States do tend to lean to that direction.

The stronger correlation is with precipitation. El Niño conditions in spring have historically come with a higher risk of very dry weather over that time frame, so this will definitely be a transition we'll have to watch closely as we move out of winter.