Back Tree Service

MSU Field Day

On August 16, 2007 -120 tree care professionals from Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Minnesota gathered in West Bloomfield, Mich., to see the latest university research results in the search for a solution to saving ash trees from emerald ash borer.

Attendees saw demonstrations of trunk and soil injections and heard several arborists’ success stories in saving ash trees from EAB. The field day began with a walking tour of fairways 1, 2 and 3 to see most of the 52 ash trees at Bay Pointe Golf Club that were part of a Michigan State University study on the use of imidacloprid as a basal soil drench to protect ash trees.

The results were clear: trees receiving the drench once per year since 2004 looked good while the control trees were dead or close to it. However, the study also revealed that if ash trees were already heavily infested with borers and showed greater than 50 percent canopy thinning and dieback at the beginning of the study in 2004, the drench was less likely to be successful.

After the walking tour participants were divided into groups for a set of six 10-minute demonstrations of some of the most popular tree care products currently being used for emerald ash borer. Trunk injections, soil injections and trunk sprays were demonstrated and discussed. Among companies/products represented at the Field Day were Arbor jet, Inc./IMA-jet (imidacloprid) emamectin benzoate trunk injection; Arbor Systems /Wedgle Pointer (imidacloprid) trunk injection; Bayer Crop Science/Merit (imidacloprid ) soil injection; J.J. Mauget /Imicide (imidacloprid), Inject-A-Cide B (Bidrin) trunk injection; and, Valent U.S.A. Corp./Safari (dinotefuran) trunk spray.

The field day finished inside with presentations by David Smitley (Michigan State University) and Dan Herms (Ohio State University), and talks by Wayne White (Emerald Tree Care), Sue Shock (Shock Brothers) and David Sutton (Bay City Tree Doctor). The key message from university researchers and tree care professionals is that we now have some effective products for reliable protection of individual ash trees, according to David Smitley, a professor of entomology at Michigan State University:

“People and cities in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio and Illinois have a choice: they can keep their ash trees healthy if they begin annual insecticide treatments when the trees are still healthy, or they can remove the trees when they die.”
- TCI MAGIZINE SEPTEMBER 2007