How to Identify Thrips

Thrips are small, slender-winged insects that are usually yellow to orange in color. Some thrips are beneficial by feeding on other pests, but most of them eat plants, damaging crops, flowers and trees. Learn how to recognize the pest species of thrips so that you can use an appropriate pesticide to protect your garden or farm.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

1. Check flower buds and furled leaves. Thrips eat inside these enclosed spaces, and you can often find the damage they do before you actually see the insect. They cause distortion and discoloration to plant tissue, and sometimes leave black spots or stippled leaves that indicate their feces are there.
2. Look at developing fruit if you have strawberries. Thrips that feed on the blossoms of strawberries can cause parts of the flowers to wither, but they don't damage the crop. Thrips eating the berries will cause the damaged, immature berry to have a bronze look.
3. Examine the size of thrips, if you find them. Thrips that feed on avocado and citrus fruits are smaller than the western flower thrips or onion thrips. Each of these types needs a different pesticide.
4. Scan the leaves for non-native thrips that attack some trees. Larvae and adults of these thrips feed on leaves, and the adults lay their eggs in the veins of expanding leaves.

Tips & Warnings

• Spray the thrip-infested plants, and the plants around them, with an insecticide such as pyrethyroid or spinosad, mixed with water, once or twice during the growing season. Don't spray too often or you may increase the population of western flower thrips, which often damage roses.
• Using natural predators of thrips is one method to try to control them, but it hasn't provided much control thusfar. Pesticides work better.
• Some other pests, like lace bugs and mites, can also cause stippled leaves, so try to see what the insect is before you choose an insect-specific pesticide.

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