Testing Kiwifruit

More about pesky leafrollers

More about pesky leafrollers

I wrote about these little insects in March. A very clever entomologist, Nicola, has been studying these little critters. (I do hope she comes and shares some of her knowledge with us at school too in the future.)

Nicola works very hard in avo orchards during the summer months. She is trying to find a way to get rid of the leafrollers that is safe for humans so that the trees do not have to be sprayed with pesticide. 

In the winter she looks at the female moths under a microscope to see if their eggs were fertilised which means male moths were in the orchard. She then has to enter a lot of data (numbers) into a computer so that she can make sense of how big the problem is or how effective the pheromone traps were.

A scientist's work never stops.