Novel commercial application of pollen to augment predatory mite populations in crops

It is well known that flowering/pollen-providing plants are beneficial to generalist acarine biological control agents (ABAs); however, the predators must move from these resource plants to the crop to effect control of the pests. Artificially applied pollen supplements, while demonstrated to be beneficial to ABAs, have not been extensively used because there has never been a means for efficient commercial application. Our preliminary results show a two-order magnitude increase in deposition ratio with our new electrostatic pollen applicator and thus demonstrated that the benefits of supplemental pollen are economical.