This year, the division conducted 11 biological control programs, five of which required laboratory rearing of beneficial insects for release into the field. The goal was to reduce specific pest populations below economically significant levels and to establish new beneficial species in the state. The largest programs focused on raising and releasing beneficial wasps that attack the Mexican bean beetle and Colorado potato beetle, pests which feed on soybean and eggplant foliage, and a predator beetle and two parasites which feed on euonymus scale, a pest of many varieties of ornamental euonymus shrubs. During FY97, approximately 96,000 of the state's 120,000 acres of soybeans were susceptible to the Mexican bean beetle. Small beneficial wasps which cannot overwinter in New Jersey's climate are raised in the laboratory each year and released into soybean fields in the summer where they kill the Mexican bean beetle larvae.
New Jersey is the second largest producer of eggplant in the nation.
Normally, growers would apply chemicals seven to 12 times to control CPB which is highly resistant to pesticides. In the last several years, the department's eggplant protection program has effectively reduced the need for chemical pesticide applications by as much as 90 percent. Recently, however, a new class of pesticide was approved for use against CPB in tomato and eggplant and others will be available in the near future. The new pesticide controls the beetle quite effectively with just one application and costs growers less than the parasite program. With the advent of additional new chemicals to control CPB more cost- effectively, NJDA eliminated the CPB parasite program at the end of the fiscal year.