Persimmons are a delicious fruit. The trees are attacked by a pest that doesn’t normally appear to bother other tree crops, says entomologist Dr Ion Stauton.

“It is the persimmon clearwing moth. It doesn’t look at all like a moth and it lives in native trees until a grower decides to grow persimmons.

“The moths find this new orchard, fly in for a ‘recce’ and getting a tick of approval, the female moth lays eggs in cracks in the branches which hatch into larvae that eat the surface bark tissue under cover of their webbing and faeces.

“When the crop is maturing, and the branches are weighed down with luscious fruit… those branches can break under the strain.

“That’s just one example. But the growers of other speciality fruits have similar specialty pests that don’t appear on any label.”

Previous articles in the ‘Know your Pest’ section cover the generalities of methods of control using biological assistance (call Bugs for Bugs or Biological Services), contact sprays, systemic insecticides which travel through the sap stream and residual insecticides that last awhile.

“There are also pheromones that confuse the males because there is so much sex-fume in the air they can’t find the real females,” Dr Staunton said. “These principles may be successfully applied to your ‘specialty’ crop.

“Systemic (sapstream) insecticides work against any insect eating any tree tissue, but registration may not be nailed down for ‘minor’ crops – just the big production crops, which can pose a challenge for those growing certain speciality crops.

“Until that is, someone approaches Bayer, Corteva, Syngenta, and others and ask to have assessment work done that will enable registration by the APVMA of a conventional or biological product for that use.

“There are articles and advertisements regularly in Australian Tree Crop magazine for various insecticides. If you have a problem and you’ll volunteer your orchard for a trial… pick up the phone and you might be on the path to a solution!”