Dr. Raul Villanueva Named Assistant Professor and Extension Specialist for Weslaco
August 24, 2009
by Rob Williams
For Dr. Raul Villanueva, the Rio Grande Valley will be called home as he settles into his new post as assistant professor and Extension Specialist for the Texas AgriLife Extension and Research Center in Weslaco.
Dr. Villanueva joined Texas AgriLife Extension on August 20th and will be working with producers and the communities in the Valley area. Before coming to Weslaco, he worked as a research associate at North Carolina State University.
While at NCSU, Villanueva worked on researching the management of leafhopper vectors of the bacterium Xylella fastidiosa, the causal agent of Pierce's Disease in European and American French hybrid grapes.
In addition to Pierce's Disease research, Villanueva has worked with citrus in Florida and apples in North Carolina. In citrus, he studied relationships between plants, mites and natural enemies with an emphasis on identifying the natural enemies of citrus rust mites.
In apples, Villanueva evaluated IPM programs based on reduced risk insecticides. The goal of the programs was to determine the effectiveness of new reduced risk insecticides and compared with broad-spectrum insecticides, such as organophosphates and carbamates.
Fruit damage at harvest, pest abundance through the season, and natural enemies were similar for both programs, but, the four year studies showed that costs of the programs were one and half to double compared with the broad spectrum insecticide programs. However, apple growers in North Carolina are using these new reduced risk programs due to changes in the regulation of pesticide use.
At Weslaco, Villanueva will be working with growers and the public on insect issues that affect the District 12 area. He said that part of his work will involve studies on phytophagous mites and its predators as he is a trained acarologist.
Villanueva received his Bachelor of Science degree in Agriculture at the Universidad Agraria La Molina in Lima. He also received his master's in Biology from the Queen's University in Canada and his Ph.D. in Entomology from the University of Florida.