2003 Use Statistics for Virginia Fruit Page

The Virginia Fruit Home Page received 15,168 visits from January through December 2003, based on numbers acquired from the Department of Entomology server for actual requests (not in-page counters). But such visits to the home page itself represents only the tip of the iceburg. Altogether there were 732,121 visits to pages within this web site in 2002, up from 531,346 in 2002.

Of the fruit crops represented in the Virginia Fruit Page, the Grape site received the most use (11,308 visits, passing apple for the fourth year in a row), followed by the Apple Page (8,280 visits) and Peach Page (6,456 visits), Small Fruit (4,645 visits) and finally Pear Pages (4,323 visits).

Within the Apple Page, biological information on pests, predators and bees received much interest. The Apple IPM page received 8,608 visits, and pages associated with Direct Pests 48,962 visits, Indirect Pests 39,917 visits, and Orchard Predators 37,672 visits. This provides a complement to the West Virginia page, which has an emphasis on disease management.  Among grape pests, those causing direct injury received 17,852 visits, and 50,055 for those causing indirect injury.

The dozen leading pest species across fruit crops whose pages were visited were (in decreasing order) Japanese beetle, European red mite, stink bugs, plum curculio, tarnished plant bug, green June beetle, oriental fruit moth, spirea aphid, codling moth, cicada, apple maggot and rose chafer.

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 26,030 visits to pages associated with the Spray Bulletin for Commercial Tree Fruit Growers (49% Apple, 31% Peach and Nectarine, 9% Pear, 6% Plum, 5% Cherry), 4,319 visits to pages associated with the Spray Guide for Commercial Vineyards, 6,307 visits to pages associated with the Spray Guide for Commercial Small Fruit (37% Strawberry, 32% Caneberry, 31% Blueberry), and 17,065 visits to pages associated with the Spray Guide for Home Fruit (34% Apple and Pear, 20% Grape, 16% Stone Fruit, 12% Blueberry, 9% Caneberry, 9% Strawberry).

A new section deals with the use of Personal Digital Assistants to distribute fruit IPM information.  The page describing this project (Virginia Fruit AdVisor: PDAs as Extension Delivery Tools) received 1,548 visits.  But the total visits for pages associated with the project were 77,732.

Send comments by e-mail to: Douglas G. Pfeiffer