One of the toughest crop pests to stop in Georgia is also the most economically devastating — the stinkbug.

The 2013 Georgia Pest Management Handbook is now available for purchase. The thirty-fourth commercial edition, published by the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, provides more than 800 pages of current information on selection, application and safe uses of pest control chemicals around farms, homes, urban areas, recreational areas and other environments where pests may occur.

Once a major threat to the tomato industry, the thrips-vectored tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV) has been unable to penetrate the vegetable’s latest line of defense — resistant cultivars.

To help keep diseases out of your winter annual flowerbeds, University of Georgia plant pathologist Jean Williams-Woodward recommends starting with disease-resistant plants.

University of Georgia public service assistant Chuck Bargeron has been named to the Invasive Species Advisory Committee (ISAC) for the National Invasive Species Council (NISC).

Genetics is the science of genes and heredity. It can link a person to a crime scene, a father to a child and — in the case of the kudzu bug — a pest to its home country.

Former Jasper County Extension agent Jean Fowler may have retired in 2011, but she and her husband Rob continue to promote the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

An academic team from the University of Georgia has been named national champions in the Entomological Society of America’s annual Linnaean Games.

It seems to me that fall is spider time as I notice spider webs hanging from everything imaginable. I’ve seen dew-covered spider webs strung between power lines, and I’ve encountered a web of two in my face when I walked out my front door.