The overall goal of the proposed work is to increase grower adoption of integrated pest and pollinator management tactics in watermelon production

Through a statewide scouting program, the grantee will partner with illinois and indiana growers to address the challenges implementing ippm practices on their farms. In total, the grantee expects this project to impact over 200 watermelon growers and the 6,000 acres of farmland they collectively manage. Funds will be used to support a graduate student to conduct on-farm demonstration trials during the summers of 2022 and 2023. In accomplishing these goals, the grantee anticipate reducing insecticide/miticide applications in seedless watermelon production by 30% (2-3 sprays per season) compared to current regimes, which will have a number of short- and long-term benefits to growers. The grantee expects decreased insecticide application, increased pollination, and improved fruit quality with increased ippm adoption in the short-term. In the long-term, the grantee anticipates greater access to prime markets (i.e., WAL-mart's new policy mandating adoption of IPM and 'BEE-safe practices' by 2025) due to decreased pesticide residues and increased viability of agroecosystems through a reduction in off-target effects from insecticide use.activities:1. Grantee will implement a threshold-based scouting program to increase grower adoption of integrated pest and pollinator management practices. A: grantee created an ippm program with the primary goal of increasing these practices in seedless watermelon production. This will require intensive collaborations with growers, in which grantee will scout grower fields and provide weekly reports and recommendations for primary arthropod pests. Each participating grower will select one 20-30 acre watermelon field to be scouted weekly. Plants will be inspected for the presence of common arthropod pests. Most pests will be sampled on a per plant basis (e.g., striped cucumber beetles, aphids, squash bugs); however, some will be on a per flower or per leaf basis. Mites will be counted on three leaves per plant using a loupe (~240 leaves per field). Pickleworm larvae will be sampled by pulling 4 male flowers per plant and examining each for entry holes (~320 flowers per field). At the end of each growing season, grantee will request that growers submit their pesticide records of fields sampled by the scout (i.e., products, rates, dates of application). Pesticide application records will be compared with weekly scouting data to determine whether the grower complied with our ippm guidelines (i.e., following the threshold and/or applying products with reduced BEE toxicity values). Grantee will meet with all growers on an annual basis to discuss insecticide records, in addition to what strategies either worked or did not work to manage the target arthropod pests. Growers will also be required to submit a survey in which they describe their experiences either following or forgoing the ippm recommendations. 2. Grantee will evaluate the impact of ippm practices on watermelon quality (pollination and insecticide residues). A: grantee will leverage data collected from objective 1. Grantee will pair pollination observations, yield estimates, and residue samples to conduct post-hoc analyses aimed at correlating the adoption of ippm practices with watermelon marketability outcomes. Grantee will conduct pollination observations in all treatment fields during the bloom period. All 10 farms will be visited biweekly over a four-week period (2 observations per farm). Grantee will conduct yield assessments at two points during the growing season, during bloom and one week before harvest. The size of all melons will be measured (length and width of melons) using a measuring tape within sampling areas, 2M times; 2M. This will be replicated 40 times in each field. Grantee will harvest 20 melons from each field to extract insecticide residues