Western flower thrips on tomato

On tomato the thrips damage leaves with pale, frass-flecked feeding patches and wound fruit when laying eggs, but the larger risk is tomato spotted wilt virus. Biocontrol on the foliage is weak here. Koppert says not to use A. cucumeris in tomato, and Cornell says it is usually ineffective because of the glandular hairs on the leaves. UConn calls Orius and A. swirskii unsuitable on greenhouse tomato. What remains is the soil mite, which takes pupae in the growing medium and only partly suppresses thrips. So the main defence is exclusion, weed control and removing plants that show virus symptoms; UMass advises that biological control should not be relied on once TSWV or INSV is already in the greenhouse.