- Spring 1995 "Update" Newsletter Article -
Spider research makes national news notes
From CATI Publication #950401
Copyright © 1995. All rights reserved.
A black widow spider hiding in a bunch of grapes purchased at a supermarket sent a streak of terror through a Maryland teenager late last year.
Such a discovery is one that none of us would like to make, but with a U.S. consumer public supposedly demanding less pesticide use by grape growers, is it perhaps something we should expect to hear about more often?
Such was the issue raised recently in a newspaper article originating in the Washington Post and spreading all over the country. It described how the teenager was munching on the store-bought table grapes when she just about made a black widow her next bite.
The Post reporter called Melissa Hansen, research director for the California Table Grape Commission, to ask why. Hansen explained that when growers cut back on pesticide use, more of these "natural" critters are going to thrive in the vineyard and eventually make it to the supermarket.
How often? To answer that question Hansen related information provided by researchers from California State University, Fresno's Integrated Pest Management Program. At a 1994 symposium sponsored by the commission and attended by researchers from both the CSU and University of California systems, CSU, Fresno plant science professor Mark Mayse reported, in response to a specific question from Hansen, that for every few thousand spiders sampled in a typical vineyard, fewer than a half dozen black widows are found.
Mayse's grape IPM research program, which has included extensive trap collection and identification of spiders in vineyards, has been supported for years by the California Agricultural Technology Institute, the American Vineyard Foundation, and the former California Raisin Advisory Board.
"It is always encouraging to find that our research findings are considered noteworthy," Mayse observed.{ page top }