Bio-IPM for All Seasons (including a 2025 recap & Tropicals deep-dive) ft. Koppert’s Joe Brenton
Apr 29, 2026
Check out the Tech On Demand podcast, featuring our very own Koppert technical consultant Joe Brenton: Bio-IPM for All Seasons (inclu… - TECH ON DEMAND brought to you by GrowerTalks - Apple Podcasts
(0:14 - 1:26)
Bill Calkins: This one covers a lot because when I have a chance to pick the brain of a biosolutions expert, I like to get into as many topics as possible within a reasonable period of time. I'm your host, Bill Calkins, and this episode of the Tech On Demand podcast, brought to you by GrowerTalks. I'm thrilled to be joined by Joe Brenton from Koppert U.S. Joe works with growers across the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic, and Southeast to develop effective bio-IPM strategies that work not only to control pests and diseases, but to grow strong, resilient crops within each greenhouse's unique set of circumstances.
Bill Calkins: Like all of the Koppert experts I've talked to on the podcast, Joe's approach is customized but grounded in science and application. My guest actually went to school to become a pilot and, after graduating, decided his true passion was in science, so he went back to school for biology, and his love of plants was born in college researching Plantago lanceolata. After college, Joe started his career as a large-scale perennial grower before joining the Koppert team and now joins me to talk crop management, starting with a 2025 recap.
(1:27 - 5:47)
Bill Calkins: Joe, welcome to the podcast. Let's take a little bit of a look back at some of the common challenges growers faced over the last 12 months and maybe some of the strategies that worked for them, things that you worked with growers to implement or, you know, change the thought pattern a little bit. And as long as you're up for that, why don't we look back on 2025? Sound good?
Joe Brenton: Absolutely. That sounds great. It's been an interesting year all around growing, and then elsewhere too, so a lot of hurdles, but so far so good, and I think it was a successful year.
Bill Calkins: Awesome. And, you know, I think when you look at wholesale sales, retail sales, customer counts, and the fact that we're, you know, attracting a big millennial, Gen Z audience into our industry, growers are generally positive, but I know that you're only as positive as that last crop you shipped out the door and maybe that last order of cuttings that arrived on your docks. So there are definitely little things that can be tweaked and strategies that can be changed, and now's the time of year that a lot of people are looking ahead for next year, but also debriefing on the past year.
Bill Calkins: So let's start with spring production, which obviously starts well before spring in most greenhouses, but what did you and the Koppert team work with young plant producers or propagators to implement to get those crops off to a strong start?
Joe Brenton: Yeah, so starting strong is key, I mean, in all aspects of growing, right? And kind of going with what you're saying about people getting more and more on board with bios and comfortability and all that, it was a big focus and some progress we saw in 2025. It was, I would say, almost a year of biostimulants. So we had a lot of people, you know, who had dabbled their toes in biocontrol. It got more and more popular and viral throughout the industry. People got their feet wet in previous years, and now, with Koppert having a bunch of biostimulants and biofungicides and all sorts of bio-somethings coming out this year, we had a lot more incorporation of those products into early propagation for spring, across the board in almost any industry.
Joe Brenton: For spring bedding crops and stuff like that, they were incorporating the bios, and now they're doing biostimulants. So that's your trichodermas, your bacteria, all the beneficial guys getting implemented into the early propagation, and we're finally seeing a lot of these, you know, mid-size and larger growers actually believing in these natural products to start the growing season strong. A lot of these inputs, like your trichodermas, when you're using it correctly, there's a keyword there, but once you're putting those inputs in, it's starting off super strong, just like nature, you know, peak nature and evolution right there. Very strong crops, and it makes a world of difference down the road. You're seeing it into production and then on to the end user as well. It's just a more robust crop in general once you get started early.
Joe Brenton: Luckily, on the flip side, it's a lot cheaper too to go in. In these propagation houses, you're using, you know, a gallon of solution for a ton of plants in these little small tray cells, right? So it's a lot more affordable. And the science behind all these products, like the trichodermas, is get it in earlier—the better. It grows with the roots and it sets you up for success. You just got to keep on them and work with your experts. I think a lot of this talk will be me focusing on find an expert you trust and listen to them because we've been doing this for a very long time. That's all we do. So right rates, right frequencies, and in propagation is the best time to start for sure.
(5:47 - 29:59)
Bill Calkins: I like that. That's really good advice. These products and the science behind them is obviously evolutionary. It's been around forever, but understanding how they work in a commercial greenhouse setting, when to apply, how often, and then staying on top of it, I think that's really good advice. And when you start working with growers using some of these biostimulants, how does that conversation go? I'm always interested when you present the concept and the strategy. What's the response usually?
Joe Brenton: So it just depends on the grower. If they've got a track record of using bios, they're way more receptive to this. The hardest part is getting people to think about bios because everybody—and when I was a grower, conventional was key, and that's all right, and that's what a lot of people do—but once they get their feet wet, they see the power of these natural products like predatory mites, for example, actually doing the control better than some of these pesticides with the resistance. It's a much easier conversation to go in with the biostimulants and be like, well, we had success with these predatory mites, but here's some fungus that's also a beneficial. We can input that early, and it goes with the plant and increases all kinds of things—plant health, rooting, and everything like that. So if people have used bios, it's a pretty easy add, and we saw that a lot in 2025, just expanding the bio genre, so to say, and just expanding that to get the biostimulants, biofungicides, and stuff like that into the crop now.
Joe Brenton: If people haven't used it, you know, they're just reading online a little bit, so it piques some of their interest. So it's a little bit more difficult to get in there. There are a lot of companies out there pushing a lot of different products, as you know and all your listeners know. It's getting almost an overload for some of these growers, so again, that's why I focus on experts that do this. But it's not super hard to get people to use it, but you have to explain the science behind it a little more readily for some of these people that are just super new, and that's fine. That's the job of all of us, right, communicate these expert-level things to people that just don't have time to dig in, data research, and all that. So it was a fun year, though, with all these new tools in our tool belt and playing around with how to incorporate everything together. It was really fun.
Bill Calkins: No, that's cool. And I think a lot of production managers are looking to go back to that fun that they might have had early on when they were trying new things and testing, and the kind of products you're mentioning are certainly perfect for that. But like you said, it's having an expert with a trusted track record that's gonna understand your production scenario and how all these different things fit together. So thinking about production, once cuttings and plugs have been transplanted and moved out of propagation, are there any common pests or diseases, or maybe some that were really challenging in 2025 or even back to 2024, that you've been working with growers on? And I guess once the plants have been transplanted, when do you start implementing the biocontrols, and then some of the results that you saw?
Joe Brenton: So yeah, definitely. I would say new pests and diseases, like there's a handful always, but the cool thing with using biocontrol is there's no huge surprises. We'll get a new species from overseas occasionally, but really all the stuff we're recommending isn't new. Like you were mentioning earlier, it's evolved over a very long time. We're just using it in correct ways. So in production, I think production is historically where people use bios the most, so we have a long history heading there, and that's kind of the gateway drug of biocontrol, is going into production. And the key would be no place is exactly the same. Greenhouses a mile apart, sometimes we have to use different approaches. Every place is different, whether that be conditions or your climate or just the grower ownership goals.
Joe Brenton: So going into it really depends on that relationship between the bioconsultant and then the growers too, to actually facilitate a plan that is meeting their goals and their needs. So, do you want to go all bios? Okay, yeah, then start right after propagation, or you're going to keep the pedal down and go all the way with bios. Do you want a hybrid approach? Sure, there's a bunch of chemicals we can spray and then just put bios in the next day. And it's really key to focus on doing things the right way, the right rates, and all that. I see a lot of people just going online and just trying to do-it-yourself-type biocontrol in production. It won't not work, it's just there are appropriate rates to go in there to meet the goals of these growers.
Bill Calkins: Well, and it would seem like if you're trying to figure it out on the fly, you're probably not being efficient. I mean, it sounds like an opportunity to waste time, waste money, and maybe not get that control level that you want.
Joe Brenton: Exactly. And historically, that's what people have been doing. It's, oh no, my chemical got resistance, and it's not doing what I thought, right? So that's what it used to be, and now that's becoming a little bit more mainstream. People are realizing prevention is key, right? You'll save a lot of money starting earlier and preventing all these issues. So our goal as consultants is to get these programs set up to cater to their needs, and honestly, once you get it set up after a year or two of experience, it's almost rinse and repeat, and a lot of these growers are now focusing on other things, not IPM. They're just focusing on the myriad of other million things growers have to focus on. But yeah, it's gaining a lot of traction for sure.
Bill Calkins: That's good. And I would think also the flip side of that equation is, I'm trying all these bios and they're not working, so I'm gonna abandon that and go back to conventional chemistries, when if they had started with an expert who understood their specific situation, they would have had success and not bailed on it so early.
Joe Brenton: Yeah, none of this is overly complex. It might be daunting to people, you know, just starting out, but it's just different. Spreading chemicals was daunting at first too when I was a grower because I didn't know what MOAs were or IRACs, rotating, and all that. But we're here to help and kind of guide you, and it's really not overly complex once you get an expert in there and they can really parse things out and make it very clear on what you need to do to accomplish those goals.
Bill Calkins: That makes sense. That makes sense. And before we jump out of spring or summer crops into garden mum season, is there anything else you want to say to sort of tie a bow on spring and production?
Joe Brenton: Sure. So for production, and even propagation, this is gaining popularity now, but we've been preaching this for the past decade since I've been at Koppert, and it's mass trapping with sticky cards. A lot of people hear me say, are you mass trapping? They say, yeah, we're throwing up sticky cards once a week, counting and going away, and that's great, but that's scouting with sticky cards. So mass trapping really is crucial in biocontrol because you're literally mass trapping reproducing adults. So you're not just hanging a card and counting and getting rid of it. You can still do that and mass trap at the same time, but you're, let's say, every 200 square feet, putting a sticky card religiously all over the place. And what that does with IPM and biocontrol is it snags a bunch of adults that could lay 150 eggs, let's say thrips, for example, in a couple weeks. So you're hitting that. You can scout to hang a card up once a week, but move that card into the masses and leave them up.
Joe Brenton: Typically, what I'm instructing my growers is our sticky cards—they're definitely probably more expensive than the ones you get on Amazon—but they're built to last, and the specific nanometer wavelength of yellow on there, it beats pheromone traps. So you want them to catch as many adults as you physically can. So leave it up until it kind of doesn't look yellow anymore, or you're using—just get the most bang for your buck there. Put them out, keep them out. You can still scout, but just move that then, after a week or day or whatever your scouting protocol is, move that into mass trapping. And I see a lot of people coming on board with that, just clients we work with. But mass trapping is key.
Joe Brenton: A lot of the ownerships, though, they really hate it because it looks real ugly. They see just yellow cards all over the place, and they think it's kind of messy or trashy, and I really want people to kind of think of the point of mass trapping. These greenhouses aren't really selling pictures of the greenhouse, right? They're selling the plants and the end product. So get them up and get them to work and really help supplement any IPM program because you're hitting a bunch of adults, and then you have all the bios to handle the rest of the life cycle. So it's really focusing on each life cycle one at a time, okay? And mass trapping is very important, and I didn't do it when I was growing, but I really wish I did.
Bill Calkins: And how about—alright, this might be kind of a dumb question—but I've seen yellow sticky tape across booms and just going back and forth. And I would imagine that's not really for scouting, is it? Because they're so huge and they're not grids. Is that a... so is that mass trapping?
Joe Brenton: Yeah, absolutely. So the sticky duct tape, as we like to call it, we have a product called Rollertrap that's that, and it just spans the greenhouse. And I do like those. We use them a lot in high-tech tomato houses and stuff like that, and where mass trapping is key because you're not spraying much of anything, right? But there are some specific caveats, and that's why you need a consultant to come out there and kind of make the right call. So the tape works really well. It can be messy because it's sticky and it gets on poles and stuff like that. I really like the cards, especially for ornamentals, in the fact that as a card is hanging in the crop, fans and wind and all that kind of jostle it a little more than the rigid tape all the way down. And we kind of see that as more attractive. It looks a little bit more natural to thrips. They see this thing blowing in the breeze, they see that correct nanometer yellow there, and then they want to eat it and then they die.
Joe Brenton: So that's not to say the tape doesn't work. We use it all the time, but a mix is great as well. But I really love the cards. It's, okay, a little easier to put up sometimes, and it's just a little bit more natural touch to get these guys to just throw themselves on it.
Bill Calkins: Okay, no, that's cool. I was just wondering. I don't see it often, but I see it enough that it clicked in my head that's not necessarily an IPM scouting...
Joe Brenton: Yeah, it's a huge sticky line to catch as many adults as you...
Bill Calkins: Okay, okay.
Joe Brenton: And it's all about population slowing and slowing that curve, right? And the more you catch, the easier it is on the bios, and quite honestly, the lower rates you're gonna have to use in the long run.
Bill Calkins: True. No, that's true. So let's talk garden mums for a little bit. It's obviously a huge seasonal crop across a lot of North America, and I know from talking to growers this year that weather was kind of the big thing. It got really hot early, we had some issues with diseases, pathogens, and also crown budding, which is a pain. But how did you—where did you see this garden mum season, and how do you guys work with growers to help them prepare and get those crops through the season? Anything that you're adding to your discussion with growers moving forward on garden mums?
Joe Brenton: Yeah, sure. So garden mums, I've grown a million of them. They're not my favorite just because you have to walk a lot, drip lines. Like, mad respect to everyone who's still doing it. It's some tough stuff. And they're kind of like, I would say, poinsettias in a way when it comes to biocontrol. Some people, or most growers, grow them the same every single year. They don't want to change. There's a ton of—you're growing hundreds of thousands sometimes, in these bigger places, at a time. There's a lot of eyes on you. You have to meet high requirements for a week and all that. So a lot of people are very hesitant to incorporate something new or change it. So I would say mums are probably one of the last main crops to incorporate bios.
Joe Brenton: Now, we're having traction over several years with a lot of people coming on board with biocontrol for mums and having, honestly, some good success. Now, you were talking about earlier the hot season early, so that didn't necessarily mess most of my clients up or anything. We were kind of prepared there. One thing I did see spanning a bunch of other growers was just using the wrong mite at the wrong time. So in cooler temps we're using like cucumeris, and it's a predatory mite, and that's cool season. We love it. It's almost a commodity at this point, and every company sells it for very cheap. It's really easy to rear, so the cost isn't huge there. So this year, with it being hotter earlier, some people I noticed were using the cucumeris and didn't switch. So once it started getting hot over, let's say, 68, 70 degrees Fahrenheit average day temps, that's when the cucs, they just peter off. They're not great when it's hot. It'll work a little bit, some people say they have success for sure, but all the data shows is reproduction, predation, everything—they get a little lethargic, and it's just not the best.
Joe Brenton: So a big issue we did see this year was people sticking with the cheaper mite and then seeing thrips and some other issues popping up because they did not have the right mite. Another aspect there too is you're using cucs and then you see it gets hot, you read Swirskii is a great mite for hot, so you throw them in together. And a lot of what we did this year trying to teach people about intraguild predation, and that's where every predatory mite's broken up to four types of mites, one being a specialist, two a selective, and then three generalists. So mixing—there's a fourth, and it eats pollen, so commercially we don't worry about the fourth. So the intraguild predation is where you're mixing the same type of predatory mites and they like to predate themselves and eat each other. So like the cucumeris and Swirskii are type threes, and if you mix those two, again, it won't not work, but you do have that predation between the two predators. So in mums, if you were using cucumeris and then switch to Swirskii, you want to either space it out a couple weeks after application. A lot of my growers will just hit them with the oil, kill all the first species, and then put in the second, just so it's a fresh start. There's no predation between the predators, and it's a lot more successful.
Joe Brenton: So that caught some people a little off guard this year, so we had a little uptick that I noticed. But overall, it was a pretty successful mum season for the most part. Now, I've heard some upticks in Fusarium and in some pathogens like that, and I think really with the uptick of Fusarium, not just mums, it's kind of across the board. I noticed it was people getting into bios, biostimulants, wanting trichoderma, let's say, as a prevention for all kinds of soil-borne pathogens, but then not speaking to the experts and just using it, but using it incorrectly, okay? And then boom, you got Fusarium or other things popping up. And it's really key. You're using it, great, but after a month you need to re-inoculate, do a little booster shot of that fungus just to keep things going. And I saw a lot of people meaning well and using trichoderma, bacillus as well. This Bacillus species I love, but the trichoderma, I saw a lot of people using it once and then maybe applying three months later or something, and it's just, yeah, it is cheap, but then you're opening the window for those pathogens. And I really like to teach our clients that we're not in the business of maybes, right? We don't want to say, yeah, throw this product on and it'll probably work, it might work. We know the rates, we know the frequencies, and we know it will work if those are followed. So that was kind of some of the issues I did see with mums, was people trying to incorporate some of these really cool new products and then just kind of slipping a little bit and not doing that frequently.
Bill Calkins: Okay, and what was that—back to the switch between cucumeris and Swirskii—what was that temperature point?
Joe Brenton: Yeah, so that's the key here, is average day. So it's not you got a one-off one hour for a day hit 70 and then make the change, but average day temps, I'd say 68 to 70 is really when you want to switch to a warmer temperature mite like Swirskii.
Bill Calkins: Okay, okay. Well, that's cool. I think that's really good advice and probably something that if folks haven't done, haven't had that challenge in the past, they might not even be aware of the difference.
Joe Brenton: Exactly. And it's our job to communicate that, and it works way better if you do that and you don't—you're not mixing and they're eating each other.
Bill Calkins: Okay, cool. Alright, you want to move to poinsettias?
Joe Brenton: Sure.
Bill Calkins: I'm sure that you and the team have a lot of protocols for poinsettias. Like you said, they're one of those crops that people tend to grow the same way, same mix, same thing, year after year after year. But as they move more and more into biocontrols or changing that mindset, I'm sure that's one that you guys have really strong protocols for. How do you help growers put together a poinsettia plan? And I guess how did things go this summer and fall as they were being produced? I would hope most of them are out the door by now, now that we're talking on, what, December 15, and all the saleable ones.
Joe Brenton: Yeah, that's a really good point. So yeah, on the flip side of mums, poinsettia is one of our oldest bio-program crops that we have. Well, there's still a lot of people that are stuck in their ways and conventional, but we've been working with poinsettias for a very long time, and it's a very strong program that we built, and we're making tweaks all the time. So my biggest recommendation for poinsettias, and just biocontrol in general, find that company and that expert to come out frequently, especially if you're new to it. Monthly visits are very common. Go out, have your experts come out, and really get eyes and tweak it every single year. Tweak it with what you're seeing. Everybody knows sometimes you've got a year where the plug producers and the cuttings of poinsettias are pushing really clean ones, and in some years everything has Bemisia whitefly, which is a really common whitefly. So it's really important to know what to expect and how bad or good it might be, right?
(30:00 - 49:59)
Joe Brenton: And I think the biggest, I guess, hurdle this year with poinsettias—no big disease—but it was labor. Labor was crazy this year for probably every industry, but yeah, poinsettias definitely. So what we had to do is pivot, and with all of our dedicated partners, we got out there monthly. We saw, oh no, there's a huge labor shortage, so we did have to pivot and come up with a few new things. We stuck to our guns with our product called Isarid, the Isaria fungus, and spraying that for whitefly. It was discovered on whitefly, and there's some pretty powerful stuff. So incorporating that spray or cold fog was great this year. But we had to pivot a little bit more. Usually we're hanging parasitic wasps for whiteflies on these little cards, and you hang them all over the greenhouse, and it takes a while, and you have to do it every single week. And we had some good success with switching to a bulk release for these parasitoids for the whiteflies. So we are able to mix that with, let's say, Swirskii, who also predates whitefly eggs and larva, and we're able to blow it out onto the crop and save a ton of time.
Joe Brenton: Then we're using our new Airobreeze bug applicator, just came out this year, and being able to mix those, that historically it's just been on a card, and it does take a long time. Works real well, but with the reduced labor that a lot of these growers were seeing, pivoting, making it so you can just blow it all out all at once and have pretty similar efficacy was key, okay? These whitefly parasitoids, where they hatch, they're homebodies. They don't love flying all over the place like your aphid parasitoids. You can release 5,000 feet over there, and they'll make it to the other side, where whitefly parasitoids, I guess they're just homebodies, not the best flyers. They'll stay very closer when they hatch. So being able to blanket the poinsettia crop early on with this bulk product was a really fun and unique way to help these growers, and it did save them a ton of time of labor.
Bill Calkins: Well, I think the labor-saving message is always strong, and I know every one of our listeners deals with labor challenges—probably not getting better, getting worse as we go. And the ability to treat a bigger area with less time and fewer people, that's definitely got to be a good selling point on that.
Joe Brenton: That's a lot of people's first issue with biocontrol. It's all, it's gonna take so much time, and sometimes it does. But once you build that relationship with a bio company, we're there to, like, we don't want to make a quick sale today, right? And get paid commission here. So it's, yeah, I want to help you out, make it work, and have you as a client for years to come, right? So these little tiny tweaks we get to make to these programs really go a long way, and me being a previous grower, I really appreciate as well. It goes a long way, and just little tweaks—I know I keep saying that—but that's very easy for a comprehensive bio program, poinsettias and many other crops included, for sure.
Bill Calkins: And I think that advice is good for all crops during all seasons. Yeah, no, I like that. Cool. Well, I think that's a pretty good recap of 2025. I do want to pick your brain about one more topic before we get out of here, and that's tropical plants. And I know that Koppert put out a really good brochure on bio-IPM for tropical and foliage crops, and with more and more growers producing these crops on-site, but bringing that product in from growers down South, out of coming out of Florida, I do think that there are pest challenges that I hear about all the time. And when I talk to our tropical managers at Ball, it's one of the questions they get a lot, is about pests hitchhiking a ride up from down South. Sometimes there are crops that growers in northern climates are not familiar with or that they just haven't dealt with in a while, or maybe haven't even thought about since they were in school learning about them. But others are more unique and specific to the southern climates. And I know that you work with growers producing tropicals, and sometimes it is hard to know what's been applied to those plants before they make that trip up north. How should we start with this? I guess I just threw a lot at you and I didn't really formulate a question, but how do you start when you start talking to growers about tropical plant programs and what they might be bringing into their greenhouse?
Joe Brenton: Yeah, so your question on how do we start was my question years ago too when we were starting, and it's just there's so many different facets of this, so many hands in that pot, and it's really hard to get everything organized right so you can start your bio program. If you're up north, you got a bunch of tropicals coming in, you could start bios there, but what if they're coming in glowing radioactive with, let's say, bifenthrin or some nasty chemical like that? Then no, you can't. You can't start that. So what we've really tried to do this year, previous years as well, but getting more communication with the originating facility who's starting this, that's in South America, wherever, and really trying to work with them to reduce the long-duration, long-residual pesticides. So what a lot of people can do is ask those questions: what chemicals have been applied in the lives of this tropical plant? Not within the last month, not two months. Some of these chemicals like bifenthrin that I mentioned, let's say minimum of 12 weeks and no bugs can live on it. No good bugs can live on it. The bad bugs, super resistant, they'll be fine. So asking the questions of the whole life cycle of what these chemicals are is key, and that knowledge really helps us in prescribing what bios we can and can't use.
Joe Brenton: A lot of the times they do come in hot from other countries, and that's this year, that's where we focus the biofungicides and all the bio stuff on. I can't use the predatory mites. Okay, well, we just came out with a new product, bio sulfur, so we're using that in some instances. The Isarid, again, doesn't really matter if there's chemicals on it, it's a fungus, so right, you can go to town there. Boosting plant health so it's less susceptible to and attractive to these pests is also another tactic for the people who aren't starting the plants off. So it's a big question, and so there's a lot of hurdles. My big tip is if you're really worried about it and you're serious of biocontrol, ask the questions of what was on the crop. But also sometimes you don't get that list, right? So there are facilities, and we do a lot of testing as well. [unclear] full-year analysis that does pretty much every pesticide that's sprayable. They'll test for it, and it's really not that expensive. And that's all of my clients that have that worry. That's what we're doing the moment they arrive to the facility, and it takes maybe a week, let's say, on a typical turnaround time. Yeah, then we can really dial in and it's down to the parts per billion at least, so we know, you know, there's a chemical here that's gonna last eight weeks. Oh, it's the lethal dose is actually three weeks, so we can kind of play around with the biofungicides and stuff until that time has passed, and then when it's safe, then we can start incorporating the bios because we know they're gonna catch fire when they land onto the plant.
Bill Calkins: That's great. And I bet a lot of listeners don't even know that that option is available. And if you're not—I mean, yes, sometimes the farms that are producing these crops will give you the list of what's been applied, but I can imagine that sometimes you're not getting the full picture. So having an option to, it's kind of like when you go to the doctor and you do a blood panel before you start taking a bunch of supplements. Know the deficiency, know the danger before you start.
Joe Brenton: Yeah, the more treatment, the better these and easier these decisions are. It's very powerful to know what you're working with. And sometimes it's like these producers aren't lying to you and they're not doing anything malicious, it's just they didn't know their spray tech didn't clean the tank out after a nasty chemical was in there as well as they thought that they did. And you still are applying it and you don't know you're applying it. So that we do, we see that all the time.
Joe Brenton: I'm sure just the contamination of an unclean tank, and no one's writing that down. So right, you'll get the list, that's great, but also, yeah, get that test done. It's not much. You don't have to send too many plants to get obliterated in the lab, but it's very powerful and useful information to have. Mass trapping this or any pest, if you're getting that in and you can't use the beneficials, just surround, kind of quarantine that crop with the correct color. If we're talking thrips parvispinus, use white or blue and kind of quarantine. And the more you're trapping, the merrier for you. Not the best, right? Yeah, it does come down to color with thrips parvispinus. So most of our studies are saying white is the go-to. We do have some success with blue as well, but again, talk to your expert. We know exactly which color sticky card you need for which pests, and there's a bunch of them. So just another tool to kind of mitigate those nasty chemicals is just broadening the IPM services and programs you're running and expanding mass trapping. And then going back, definitely get some tests done and see what's actually in there.
Bill Calkins: Okay. No, I think that's great advice. And I know that, like you said, thrips parvispinus has been on everyone's radar for the last couple years, and I do actually see the mass trapping as a protocol from a lot of the research that I'm reading, so I think that's really good advice.
Joe Brenton: It's so rewarding to walk in a greenhouse that's using our white sticky cards, and you can just see it from a mile away because those thrips are a little darker than your western flower thrips, and you can just see all the death on there. And I get excited about it.
Bill Calkins: Nice. Nice. I love how pest experts love to see dead bugs.
Joe Brenton: Yeah, dead bad bugs. Living good bugs that eventually do have to die because they run out of food to eat, which is the goal.
Bill Calkins: Hey, well said. That's kind of the goal. Everything's put in, if you want a clean crop, it should be striving. It's true. Thinking about these tropical and foliage crops that are grown generally year-round, I mean, they're super long crop times. I do have to believe that resistance is one of the key issues that they were trying to solve by using bio-IPM programs with tropicals and foliage, right?
Joe Brenton: Yep. So the resistance is a big deal, and honestly using bios, I mean, from what I've seen, is you're using the bios, you're breaking that cycle of chemicals you're applying and really almost making them less resistant. So sometimes I see a couple of greenhouses here and there that have used bios for a long time. They can bring out some of the weaker chemicals after a couple life cycles, and sometimes they're a little bit more effective. Yeah, sometimes it does take a while, but you're reducing their exposure, so after some time it should be more effective with some of these cheaper ones that you kind of disregarded forever because there was resistance. Get that back.
Bill Calkins: Now that's—I think that's good advice. And earlier on you mentioned Airobreeze as a product from Koppert that's used to sort of mass disperse. And one of the things we talked about when we were getting ready for this podcast is that you had been testing—you had some time this year to test a new product or application method, mostly for small- and mid-size greenhouses, which is kind of right in our listener wheelhouse, and what it was for applying green lacewing eggs or something. I always get the bugs slightly confused, but tell us more about this because it was really interesting, and I think it's cool that you had some time to take a look at how this works.
Joe Brenton: Yeah, yeah. So I love doing a little at-home R&D and trying out all this stuff that I'm recommending, right? So we recently—so like a couple years ago—came out with a product called EggAdjuvant, and what that does is make green lacewing eggs sprayable so you can spray it onto the crop. The reason we came out with that is because the green lacewing larvae is highly cannibalistic, and you can see that very easily. If you see an egg hatch next to another egg, it's buffet. So when we were first using the green lacewing eggs, we were putting them not really all in one spot, but concentrated spots all over to try to mitigate that. And you do see that. That one lacewing hatches first, he's just going to town on a bunch of the open buffet, like you said. So we wanted to come up with a way so they're more dispersed in the crop and not hatching right next to their breakfast.
Bill Calkins: Yeah.
Joe Brenton: So we came out with EggAdjuvant, and we were having some success with it, right? So we were putting them in your typical sprayers and all that, and we're getting scrambled eggs a lot of the time. And it was very clear. You pour the eggs and some water, it's clear. You sprayed it out, took the sample, and it was egg-yolk yellow. So everything's cracking and getting obliterated because they're eggs and they're super delicate, right? So even, I think this was like last year at Cultivate, I did a presentation and I was presenting the EggAdjuvant and green lacewing eggs, and I had a little backpack, you know, hand-pump backpack, and it worked great because it wasn't very violent in there. But I was thinking that that's just—nobody wants to do that. That's just a lot of work.
Joe Brenton: So I partnered with a company called Tomahawk, and basically it's just a mosquito fogger for people's backyard. So I wanted to see if we were able to use that to fog slash mist this EggAdjuvant and eggs onto the crop. Turns out it works great, so we now sell those. And the key to that, that I love, is you can make the backpack very concentrated, okay? And we're still seeing the max occlusion. So the occlusion rate is how quickly the eggs hatch, right? So we don't see any disturbance in hatch times using this. So we're putting it in the backpack, fogging it over the top. It's kind of counterintuitive of what you typically do with a spray. You want your sprayers to encompass the whole plant, spray everything. And this is really, you're just blowing it, fogging it over the top and peppering. You just want to get the eggs onto the crop. You don't really care about them getting all over the crop because they'll hatch out, they're hungry, and they'll find stuff and do the rest of the work for you.
Joe Brenton: So it's really, I think, will be very powerful when people do buy one of these backpacks from us. The EggAdjuvant, we don't pay for that. Eggs, we don't charge for that either. It's kind of like our applicators. If you're using our products, we're just making sure it works for you and not gonna charge anymore for that.
Bill Calkins: That's cool.
Joe Brenton: Yeah, and I've ran it a lot with very concentrated rates, and the only factor is you make it very concentrated, you better be running through that crop to spread it out in time. So one backpack I've done for about an acre, and you could probably go north of that, but you gotta be hustling. It's a four-gallon tank, so you gotta be moving. But it's a great way to reduce that cannibalism of the green lacewings and just get it out quickly all over the crop. So it's just one of the new things we've done this year that's pretty fun, in my opinion.
Bill Calkins: So it's like 5K training and bio-IPM at the same time. Great for the plants, great for you, bad for the pests. That's cool. And if someone wants to order or ask about this product, what's it called? Just like a Tomahawk... EggAdjuvant sprayer or something?
Joe Brenton: Yeah, so it'll be different in different regions just for contractual stuff, but just talk to your local rep from Koppert, okay, and they'll be able to point you in the right direction.
Bill Calkins: Awesome.
Joe Brenton: And it works great because it's included with Koppert, so you're not having to pay for two shipping, and, you know, two boxes shipping from all over the place. So I love it. Save a freight money there.
Bill Calkins: Well, that's really cool. Well, Joe, this has been awesome. I really appreciate your time. Your team always takes time out of your schedule to talk to me for these podcasts, and I really appreciate it, and I do appreciate you being a good sport and covering all these topics. I know it's a lot, but I mean, it's kind of what you do as an expert who's consulting greenhouses. I'm sure there's a million more topics you get hit with on a weekly or monthly basis. Have we missed anything? Is there anything you want to share with the listeners before we close this one out?
Joe Brenton: No, just reiterate, talk to the experts at least for the first couple of years and get it really dialed into your specific grow. There's a lot of stuff online of misinformation. It's becoming so popular. There's all sorts of different opinions everywhere. Just, yeah, listen to your experts. And I think a big misinformation also, I think I forgot to mention, is like banker plants and stuff like that. It's becoming—I see it all over the place, and I don't want to say it doesn't work. It will work if you know what you're doing, but I would listen to the experts first, and then once you know, once you get down the life cycles and all that of these predators or parasitoids, then you can put in some banker plants because it's really—a lot of people are saying, you know, banker plants, it's intro to IPM. Just do this, you'll be fine, and nine times out of ten it doesn't work, right? People just think you put it out and you're done. Yeah, you gotta pay somebody to take care of that plant and really do it. So I don't hate the banker plants. It's just be careful. It's not as easy as you think. And we really want to treat these bio rates and frequencies like we treat chemicals. You want to go in and spray, let's say, imidacloprid, read the label, and it's like, let's use an eighth of—let's use an eighth of the label, right? Like, use the full rate, use what people are telling you, and it'll work.
Bill Calkins: I think that's really good advice, and it's probably general advice of a lot of this stuff takes tons of expertise, and that's generally not what a grower's doing. Their job is to produce great plants and then work with experts who understand how to control the pests, control the diseases, keep the crops clean, keep getting them off to a good start, and then allow the grower to do their job more effectively, which is producing these plants and moving them out the door, getting the sales. So yeah, like you said, work with the experts, work with the team like the folks at Koppert. And speaking of which, where can listeners go to find more information about Koppert and the experts in your crew?
Joe Brenton: Yeah, so all the socials, it's Koppert. So @koppertus is really where you'll find most of our stuff, koppertus.com website. And on the website there's a cool map too, so you can see the closest rep. We have over 35 consultants that live and breathe this stuff, so you can click through the map, see who's the closest to you, and probably get an on-site visit at some point. So check that map out. It's a good way to see where your local reps are.
Bill Calkins: Excellent. I will put that link into the show notes for the website and the map of reps. And one of the things I like to point out is, like you said, it's @koppertus. You guys are a global company. You've been doing this for a long time and have the knowledge of the global understanding of this. Not just, you guys are a big company and you've been doing this a heck of a long time. And yeah, really appreciate that knowledge and expertise.
Joe Brenton: Yeah. And good point, it is koppertus.com, but [unclear] .com, that has any bug we've ever made on it, and a lot of them aren't even allowed in the United States or not native. So yeah, Koppert U.S., everything we sell in the U.S. will be online.
Bill Calkins: Excellent. Well, Joe, thanks again for your time. Really appreciate you.
Joe Brenton: Yeah, pleasure talking with you.
Bill Calkins: Have fun. For sure. I'm your host, Bill Calkins, and on behalf of the Tech On Demand team and our friends at Koppert, take care out there. Start planning your bio-IPM program for 2026. Get ahold of the Koppert experts and be sure to subscribe to the Tech On Demand podcast on your favorite app. That way you will never miss an episode.
Some Resources & Products Mentioned:
Airobreez—distribute natural enemies
Isarid—biological pesticide
Horiver—trap and monitor flying insects
Listen to more episodes of TECH ON DEMAND:TECH ON DEMAND brought to you by GrowerTalks
