Discover crucial strategies and common challenges in managing insect pests for healthy garlic crops. This quiz covers identification, monitoring, and effective control methods in horticultural garlic production.
Which insect is most commonly known to tunnel into garlic bulbs, causing internal damage and making them unmarketable?
Explanation: Onion maggots are known to target underground parts of alliums, including garlic, by burrowing into bulbs, which can result in significant yield loss. Potato aphids primarily infest leaves, cabbage loopers are leaf feeders of brassica crops, and cutworms primarily cut seedlings at the soil line rather than attacking bulbs directly.
What is an early sign that a garlic crop may be infested with thrips?
Explanation: Thrips feeding causes silvery streaks or blotches on garlic leaves due to the removal of plant cell contents. Large holes in bulbs are more characteristic of beetle damage, webbing is typical of certain mites or caterpillars, and whole-plant wilting overnight is often due to root diseases or severe cutworm damage.
Which method is most effective for monitoring adult populations of onion maggot flies in garlic fields?
Explanation: Yellow sticky traps are widely used to monitor adult onion maggot flies as they are attracted to the color and get caught on the sticky surface. Pitfall traps target ground-moving insects, light traps attract nocturnal fliers (like moths), and pheromone lures are species-specific, usually for moths, not maggot flies.
Introducing beneficial nematodes into garlic fields can help control which pest at the soil stage?
Explanation: Beneficial nematodes target soil-dwelling stages of pests like onion maggot larvae before they reach and damage garlic bulbs. Aphids, leaf miners, and red spider mites are typically controlled by parasitoids or predatory insects and are not affected significantly by soil-applied nematodes.
When is the most appropriate time to apply insecticides for effective control of garlic thrips populations?
Explanation: Applying insecticides early, as soon as thrips or their feeding damage become visible, ensures treatment occurs before populations build up and cause significant harm. Application after harvest, during dormancy, or only in late fall misses the period when thrips are active and most vulnerable.