December 1, 2025

Pest Management Solutions for Specialty Crops and Specialty Uses

LATEST NEWS

Announcing the 2025 IR-4 SOAR Award Recipients

At this year’s Food Use Workshop, IR-4 presented SOAR Awards to two incredible collaborators: Thierry Besançon and Armando Monterosso. 

The SOAR Award honors external partners who exemplify the areas of Service, Outreach, Altruism and Research, while supporting specialty crop growers and the mission of The IR-4 Project. This year’s winners have made significant contributions not only to their individual research areas, but to the specialty crop industry as a whole.

Learn more about the awardees in our latest story!

EVENT UPDATES

Mark Your Calendars for the 2026 Industry Technology Session

Registration is now open for IR-4's 2026 Industry Technology Session, which will be held virtually (via Zoom) on Thursday, February 19. We anticipate a schedule of 11:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. ET; however, exact timing is subject to change. This annual event invites companies to introduce their novel pest control technologies, present updates on products already in IR-4 research, or share news about previously presented technologies or already known products.

The Industry Technology Session (ITS) is a precursor to the 2026 Food Use Workshop. Products discussed during the next ITS are eligible for IR-4 research in 2027. Find the presentations from the 2025 Industry Technology Session here.

Registration is free, but it is required to attend. Once you register, you will receive a confirmation email with a Zoom link for the virtual event. Please visit the event web page to register and learn more. We hope you'll join us in February!

Join Us as a 2026 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 2026? We welcome your partnership! Contact ir-4_project@ncsu.edu for more information.

RESEARCH UPDATES

Food Crops

The latest tolerance success was added to the IR-4 website in August. Find other tolerance successes under Food Crop Successes & Stories.

• Afidopyropen (Federal Register date: July 23, 2025)

Environmental Horticulture

In case you missed it, the IR-4 Environmental Horticulture Program has an updated program one-pager. We encourage our ornamental research stakeholders to save this updated document, which outlines the work of this program, shows how the biennial research cycle works, and includes contact information. The one-pager (pictured above, front and back) can be found on the program web page and the EH Workshop event page (as well as the intranet for internal team members).

— Stay tuned for more in December —

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This work is supported by project award nos. 2025-79111-45234 and 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.