2005 Use Statistics for Virginia Fruit Page

The Virginia Fruit Home Page received 11,753 visits from January through December 2005, 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 565,755 visits to pages within this web site in 2005

Of the fruit crops represented in the Virginia Fruit Page, the Grape site received the most use for the sixth year (8,977 visits), followed by the Apple Page (7,014 visits) and Peach Page (4,705 visits), Pear Page (3,509 visits) and finally Small Fruit (3,493 visits).

Within the Apple Page, biological information on pests, predators and bees received much interest. The Apple IPM page received 4,398 visits, and pages associated with Direct Pests 54,338 visits, Indirect Pests 33,754 visits, and Orchard Predators 27292 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 13,221 visits, and 32,491 for those causing indirect injury.

The dozen leading pest species across fruit crops whose pages were visited were (in decreasing order) stink bugs, Japanese beetle, plum curculio, codling moth, European red mite, spirea aphid, periodical cicada, oriental fruit moth, grape phylloxera, cherry fruit fly, apple maggot, and San Jose scale.

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 37,293 visits to pages associated with the Spray Bulletin for Commercial Tree Fruit Growers (40% Apple, 33% Peach and Nectarine, 10% Pear, 9% Cherry, 8% Plum), 2,803 visits to pages associated with the Spray Guide for Commercial Vineyards, 5,398 visits to pages associated with the Spray Guide for Commercial Small Fruit (41% Strawberry, 32% Blueberry, 27% Caneberry), and 14,753 visits to pages associated with the Spray Guide for Home Fruit (31% Apple and Pear, 22% Grape, 17% Stone Fruit, 13% Blueberry, 9% Caneberry, 8% Strawberry). (In the VCE website, the PDF version of the commercial tree fruit guide received 27,459 visits, the commercial vineyard site received 4,467 visits, the commercial small fruit guide received 1,909 visits, and the home fruit guide received 11,632 visits).

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 1,267 visits.  But the total visits for pages associated with the project were 47254.

A new section, created in cooperation with the North American Bramble Growers Association, received 2,524 visits.

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