July 31, 2025

Pest Management Solutions for Specialty Crops and Specialty Uses

LATEST NEWS

IR-4 Seeks Next Executive Director

The IR-4 Project is actively searching for a new Executive Director to lead our dedicated team and advance our mission.

We're seeking a visionary leader who shares our deep commitment to serving specialty crop stakeholders. This influential role offers a unique opportunity to shape the future of pest management research, ensuring growers have access to the safe, effective tools essential for their success.

Ready to make an impact? Find the job description on our Careers page.

Apply directly through the NC State University job posting.

Your help is invaluable in this search! Please share this announcement (or the updated job flyer) with your networks to help us find exceptional candidates for this critical leadership position.

Get to Know Josh Kindel

IR-4 recently welcomed Josh Kindel as Environmental Horticulture Program Manager. Josh was kind enough to answer a few questions to help the IR-4 community get to know him better. Learn more about Josh's background, what brought him to IR-4, and his dog, Cassandra, in this Q&A session with IR-4 Science Communications Intern, Raven Baez:

Thank you to all who submitted nominations for the 2025 SOAR Awards, celebrating Service, Outreach, Altruism, and Research in the IR-4 community. Stay tuned this fall when we plan to announce this year's recipients!

EVENT UPDATES

Registration Now Open for the 2025 Food Use Workshop

Registration is now open for the 2025 Food Use Workshop, which will take place September 9-11 in Denver, Colorado. Research priorities for residue, product performance, and integrated solutions studies for 2026 will be identified during this workshop. A virtual attendance option will be available.

We will update the Food Use Workshop web page continually as the event approaches, so we recommend bookmarking it for future reference. We'll send reminders via newsletter, too, so please encourage your colleagues to sign up for these announcements.

July 1 was the deadline to submit Project Clearance Requests for this year's Food Use Workshop. Stay tuned in August for the online project nomination period.

Registration info, hotel booking, and a tentative agenda are now available on the event web page. Register by August 28 to take advantage of the early bird rate!

We hope to see you in Denver (or virtually) in September!

Registration Now Open: 2025 Environmental Horticulture Workshop

Registration is now open for the 2025 Environmental Horticulture Workshop! We look forward to gathering in Kansas City, Missouri, on October 7-8. At this event, stakeholders involved in the Environmental Horticulture Program will collaborate to set national and regional research priorities for the next two-year cycle.

August 29 is the deadline for submitting Project Clearance Requests and Grower Survey responses to be considered at the Environmental Horticulture Workshop.

Please bookmark the event web page. We will update this page continually as the event approaches. Registration, hotel booking info, and a tentative agenda are now available.

We hope to see you in Kansas City!

Join Us as a 2025 Event Sponsor

Sponsors make IR-4's events possible and help us deliver on our grower-focused mission. Are you interested in joining IR-4 as an event sponsor for 2025? We welcome your partnership! With events spanning new technology, food crops and ornamental crops, 2025 is an opportune time to join us as a sponsor and reach a variety of specialty crop stakeholders. Please reach out to ir-4_project@ncsu.edu for more information.

RESEARCH UPDATES

Food Crops

The latest tolerance success was added to the IR-4 website in February. Discover other tolerance successes in the ' Food Crop Successes & Stories' section.

• Cyprodinil + Fludioxonil (Federal Register dates: February 25 and 26, 2025)

Environmental Horticulture

In preparation for the 2025 Environmental Horticulture Workshop, the 2025 Environmental Horticulture Program Grower & Extension Survey is now available to collect your input.

The Grower & Extension Survey is the best way to tell us which pest problems you have difficulty managing due to insufficient tools. Your input helps shape discussions at the biennial Environmental Horticulture Workshop and helps our team understand the needs of growers in this vital sector. As of fall 2024, we have transitioned the survey to a Google form. You may complete and submit the form here (or find it linked on the EH Grower Needs page).

The deadline for submitting a survey for 2026/2027 research is August 29, 2025. Thank you for your important input—we look forward to securing tools that will help you grow your healthiest crops yet.

— Stay tuned for more in August —

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This work is supported by project award no. 2022-79111-38469, from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, with substantial cooperation and support from the State Agricultural Experiment Stations, USDA-ARS and USDA-FAS. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and should not be construed to represent any official USDA or U.S. Government determination or policy. In accordance with Federal Law and U.S. Department of Agriculture policy, this institution is prohibited from discriminating on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, age or disability.