AN EXPERIMENTAL MONITORING AND ADVISORY SERVICE IN ORCHARD VOLE CONTROL

The North Carolina integrated, pest and. orchard, management project (IPOMS) has moved, from the data-gathering phase into an experimental information delivery system. We present here for possible comment the •written directions for vole monitoring that we prepared, for use by the orchard, specialists who will implement the monitoring and advisory system. IPOMS started, in 1976 as a joint effort of a number of subject matter departments under the North Carolina Agricultural Research Service. A brief description of this cooperative effort of horticulturists, entomologists, plant pathologists, economists, zoologists and soil and weed. scientists has been presented to this group (Hayne 1978). Data on all these aspects of apple production were gathered, from 1976 through 1979; they are now being analyzed. According to plan, the project moved into the information delivery phase in a preliminary way in 1979, and now an experimental monitoring and. advisory service will be offered to all IPOMS cooperators who are interested; for this trial the service will be restricted to those orchard blocks used in the IPOMS study