Organic grower John Hickerson of New Jersey has a big pest problem. It’s called the leopard moth. has a 137-acre farm at Newton in Sussex County with nine acres of organic apples. About two years ago, he began noticing that some of the shoots in the trees would die out in late August. From a distance, it looked like fireblight, but on closer inspection, he found that an insect had been boring into the branches. He sent an infested branch to Rutgers University scientists, who identified the culprit as the leopard moth (Zeuzera pyrina). The leopard moth, which is white […]