2004 Use Statistics for Virginia Fruit Page

The Virginia Fruit Home Page received 13,595 visits from January through December 2004, based on numbers acquired from the Department of Entomology server for actual requests (not in-page counters). But such visits to the home page itself represents only the tip of the iceburg. Altogether there were 660,986 visits to pages within this web site in 2004, close to the maximum of 732,121 visits in 2003

Of the fruit crops represented in the Virginia Fruit Page, the Grape site received the most use for the fifth year (9,362 visits), followed by the Apple Page (7,826 visits) and Peach Page (5,212 visits), Small Fruit (3,895 visits) and finally Pear Pages (3,636 visits).

Within the Apple Page, biological information on pests, predators and bees received much interest. The Apple IPM page received 5,196 visits, and pages associated with Direct Pests 58,291 visits, Indirect Pests 49,848 visits, and Orchard Predators 31,590 visits. This provides a complement to the West Virginia page, which has an emphasis on disease management.  Among grape pests, those causing direct injury received 15,707 visits, and 68,452 for those causing indirect injury.

The dozen leading pest species across fruit crops whose pages were visited were (in decreasing order) periodical cicada, stink bugs, Japanese beetle, European red mite, plum curculio, tarnished plant bug, green June beetle, twospotted spider mite, oriental fruit moth, spirea aphid, codling moth, apple maggot, grape phylloxera and grape berry moth.

The site continues to be used by both commercial and home fruit producers, reflected by use statistics for pages based on Virginia Tech pest management recommendations. There were 24,739 visits to pages associated with the Spray Bulletin for Commercial Tree Fruit Growers (35% Apple, 40% Peach and Nectarine, 8% Pear, 8% Plum, 10% Cherry), 4,872 visits to pages associated with the Spray Guide for Commercial Vineyards, 5,668 visits to pages associated with the Spray Guide for Commercial Small Fruit (41% Strawberry, 34% Blueberry, 25% Caneberry), and 14,906 visits to pages associated with the Spray Guide for Home Fruit (36% Apple and Pear, 19% Grape, 16% Stone Fruit, 13% Blueberry, 8% Caneberry, 8% Strawberry).

A new section deals with the use of Personal Digital Assistants to distribute fruit IPM information.  The page describing this project (Virginia Fruit AdVisor: PDAs as Extension Delivery Tools) received 1,626 visits.  But the total visits for pages associated with the project were 66,588.

Send comments by e-mail to: Douglas G. Pfeiffer