"Susan Erickson" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 9 Nov 2005 07:29:14 -0500, "Al" wrote:
run for hills and don't look back!

Al
PS Whitefly generate spontaneously from Tomato plant tissue. The
presence
of ethylene increases whitefly production. I can't find the study....but
I
know I read it someplace.


LOL.. How true it seems. I had to move the tomato plants because
they were growing too close to the door to the gh and produced
such a cloud of whitefly. Of course the next location did not
seem to be visited. I have come to the conclusion that they need
to rotate locations to keep the population down. absolutely no

Actually this makes perfect sense. The longer a plant is in one spot, the
greater the likelihood that some harmful organism will make its home on or
near it. This is especially true of annuals, since perrenials generally
have greater defenses against pest organisms. With many crops, one is wise
to rotate them with completely different crops on a regular basis so that
pest organisms that found the first will have nothing to feed on when the
next crop is planted. This is also a factor in selecting crops to be
rotated since some pests can attack more than one plant species. Anyway,
when the pest organism finds nothing to eat, it either dies or leaves the
area depending on the species in question. This is why the whiteflies
diappeared once you moved the tomatoes. And the new site wasn't visited, at
least in numbers you would notice, because the pest has to find the new
location before an infestation can occur. I'll wager, though, that if you
leave the tomatoes in the new location for a while, the white flies will
reappear. Your conclusion is absolutely correct, and applicable to almost
all annual crops.

Cheers,

Ted

--
R.E. (Ted) Byers, Ph.D., Ed.D.
R & D Decision Support Solutions
http://www.randddecisionsupportsolutions.com/
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