FLOATING ROW COVERS, PLASTIC MULCH AND CONTROL OF WHITEFLIES IN ZUCCHINI SQUASH

Abstract

To determine the effectiveness of floating row covers alone or combined with plastic mulch in the control of whiteflies and in yield of zucchini squash, seven treatments were set up in a design of random blocks with four replications: control, black plastic mulch (BPM), white plastic mulch (WPM), black on white co-extruded plastic mulch (BWCM), white on black co-extruded plastic mulch (WBCM), Kimberly Farm row cover alone (KFC), black plastic mulch plus Kimberly Farm row cover (BPM+KFRC), and black plastic mulch plus Vispore row cover (BPM+VRC). The treatments of mulch alone or mulch plus row cover induced significantly lower values for days to harvest and higher values for plant cover relative to the control (P£0.05). WPM, BPM, and BWCM resulted in the highest yields (P£0.05) with 35.4, 35.2 and 31.1 t×ha-1, respectively, while the control produced only 21.4 t×ha-1. The treatments with floating row covers had practically zero incidence of whitefly, while WPM, although it had the highest yield, also had the highest number of whiteflies (P£0.05), relative to the rest of the treatments.