News & Events In Common Newsletter Fall 2009 All Ears for Research on this Sharon Farm
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Volume 8 • Number 1 • Fall 2009
All Ears for Research on this Sharon Farm
Jim Ward of Ward’s Berry Farm in his Sharon corn field. As a commercial grower, Jim Ward isn’t about to fool around when it comes to dealing with pests like the European corn borer or the corn ear worm. He knows the kind of damage they can cause to the fifty acres of corn he grows on his family farm in Sharon. That’s why he makes sure to keep up with the latest research from his alma mater, UMass Amherst. Ward and his brother, Bob, are co-owners of Ward’s Berry Farm, started by their father in 1981 primarily to grow blueberries (the farm still has a stand of majestic, 25-year-old blueberry bushes). Now the farm ships berries, as well as a long list of vegetables including corn, to farm stands and restaurants in Boston and around the region. Farmers usually control corn pests with insecticides but Ward is trying a new way to fight the European corn borer this year. With help from UMass Extension educator Ruth Hazzard and project manager Amanda Brown, Ward released millions of tiny wasps, called Trichogramma ostriniae, into a four-acre test field. The wasp lays its eggs inside the borer’s eggs, killing the borer and saving a sweet, creamy yellow ear of corn for the market. About 25 farmers in Massachusetts are using Trichogramma ostriniae, brought to the U.S. from China by UMass Amherst researcher David Ferro in 1990 and now commercially available from IPM labs, in their cornfields. For years, Ward, who received a plant and soil sciences degree from UMass Amherst in 1986, has been using other IPM growing methods – like releasing predatory nematodes in his strawberries – whenever feasible and says Trichogramma ostriniae is just another tool in his toolbox when it comes to farming. “We try all the solutions they come up with at UMass to reduce pesticide use,” Ward said. “And releasing the wasps was about the easiest thing to do.”
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