The 2019-2020 academic year began with two new additions, a student and a study system, to the fruit crop entomology lab: Matt Hetherington joined the fruit team and began developing a project to improve sustainable management of the tarnished plant bug in strawberry.  We are pleased to announce that this project was recently awarded a Research and Education grant from North Central SARE!

Matt’s work focuses on whether intercropping strawberry with alfalfa impacts the abundance and distribution of tarnished plant bugs and beneficial arthropods in strawberry fields, and explores the ecological factors that underlie such effects.  Check out the factsheet on this research below:.