A New, Non-Toxic Method to Control the Key Pest in Pecans

The goals of this PHASE II program are to further expand our Phase I findings to fully determine the major effects of pheromone source and application characteristics (i.e. the density of sources per area, the effect of formulation and release rate, and the amount of pheromone that needs to be released to obtain the desired effect) and the vertical positioning of the controlled release devices in the pecan trees will have on PNC moth. Optimization of bulk production of PNC pheromone and of the mating disruption and A&K devices will be done during Phase II, as well as preparation for the commercialization of these products. In Phase III we will finalize the optimization of mass production of pheromone and of the controlled release devices and proceed with execution of the commercialization plan. The objectives of this Phase II are to: 1). Reliably synthesize E9, Z11-16:Al in large scale, 2). Optimize our mating disruption formulation and field technique using only sex-pheromone, 3). Optimize formulations and field techniques for the two strategies of attract and kill, 4) Map the distribution of pheromone and the presence of moths and male capture in traps. 5). Begin the optimization process of industrial production of PNC pheromone and of the different formulations