Liburd lab enjoyed the beautiful morning outside planting rabbiteye varieties. We have one of the last rabbiteye fields in Florida!

Inspecting blueberry bushes for chilli thrips injury in southwest Florida

We just published a new manuscript about the use of deep learning (AI) to detect twospotted spider mites and predatory mites in strawberry. Check this work out at sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

After a year of permits, rearing, and protocol adjustments, my lab finally did our first major release of parasitoids for SWD management in an organic blueberry planting today 🫐 UF IFAS Solutions UF Blueberry Extension UF/IFAS Entomology & Nematology Small Fruit and Vegetable IPM Lab

Congratulations Oscar Liburd! #UFBugs

Marigold and cowpea are used regularly by organic squash growers for pest management purposes. In this new manuscript published today, we investigated this common practice to assess the pest management benefits, with special emphasis on whiteflies

This is my more recent article about my work with blueberries in FL Miticidal Tools for Management of Southern Red Mites Infesting Southern Highbush Blueberries mdpi.com/2353210 #mdpiinsects via Insects MDPI

Colleagues that I collaborated the past 6 years: Oscar Liburd, Monique Rivera, Dr. Lauren Diepenbrock🐞👩‍🔬, José Dubeux, Carey Minteer (Minteer BioControl of Weeds Lab), Jawwad Qureshi, Alexander Gaffke among others...

Marice Lopez gave a fantastic PhD exit seminar this afternoon on the blueberry gall midge. Go Marice! 🫐

Feeling great today, my graduate student, Marice Lopez Laurenti has graduated with her Ph. D.

There has been some controversies regarding the use sweet alyssum for enhancing predatory mites population in strawberries for TSSM control. Here is a new perspective.

Fresh squash from the Liburd Lab! 😋

Happy holidays and merry Christmas from the Liburd lab! 🎄

The Liburd lab did our annual grape pruning. What a great day to get outside of the lab!

No one draws a crowd like James Brown, PhD. C̶a̶n̶d̶i̶d̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶ ̵! Congratulations to Dr. James Brown on a successful PhD defense! 🎉🫐

Dr. Congliang Zhou, our postdoc, presented an AI-enhanced technology for insect detection and counting in sticky traps at the #AIinAg Conference in Texas A&M

Today is a very important day for one of my excellent students, James Brown. After spending 4 years and one semester he is graduating with his PhD from my program ⁦Small Fruit and Vegetable IPM Lab⁩ ⁦James Brown, PhD. C̶a̶n̶d̶i̶d̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶ ̵⁩

Looks like we have two things to celebrate today. We just got word that our paper focused on biological control of southern red mite has been published. Great job to the authors and everyone involved.

Thank you to Purdue Entomology for inviting me to give a seminar talk on my lab’s work UF/IFAS Entomology & Nematology: “Application of Cultural Techniques and Biological Control Tactics to Manage Agricultural Pest Populations”. It was a great turnout with insightful questions and discussion.