Of the fruit crops represented in the Virginia Fruit Page, the Grape site received the most use (6,928 visits, passing apple for the second year in a row), followed by the Apple Page (6,741 visits) and Peach Page (4,663 visits), Small Fruit (3,800 visits) and finally Pear Pages (3,728 visits).
Within the Apple Page, biological information on pests, predators and bees received much interest. The Apple IPM page received 4,610 visits, and pages associated with Direct Pests 31,240 visits, Indirect Pests 34,778 visits, and Orchard Predators 18,496 visits. This provides a complement to the West Virginia page, which has an emphasis on disease management.
The dozen leading pest species whose pages were visited were (in decreasing order) Japanese beetle, European red mite, plum curculio, codling moth, stink bugs, oriental fruit moth, tarnished plant bug, green June beetle, spirea aphid, and cicada.
The site continues to be used by both commercial and home fruit producers, reflected by use statistics for pages based on Virginia Tech pest management recommendations. There were 31,501 visits to pages associated with the Spray Bulletin for Commercial Tree Fruit Growers (65% Apple, 13% Peach and Nectarine, 8% Cherry, 7% Plum, 7% Pear), 5,678 visits to pages associated with the Spray Guide for Commercial Vineyards, 6,002 visits to pages associated with the Spray Guide for Commercial Small Fruit (54% Strawberry, 28% Caneberry, 18% Blueberry), and 21,710 visits to pages associated with the Spray Guide for Home Fruit (26% Apple and Pear, 22% Grape, 17% Stone Fruit, 17% Blueberry, 9% Caneberry, 9% Strawberry). While overall visits to these pages were up, the relative proportions of the crops was similar to 2000.
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