Corn Borers Significant in Southern Areas,
Northern Univoltine Moth Flight Just Started

       

Because of the relatively cool and windy June nights in areas where the bivoltine ecotype
corn borers are known to occur in South Dakota, I was predicting a light corn borer year
as late as Monday last week (June 30) when we had the annual field tour at the SE
Research Farm.

Well, looks like I may have to eat moth.  I went back to the farm on Sunday (July 6)
and saw a lot of leaf feeding  damage on my conventional corn.  Of course, this is
good news to me as a scientist but bad news to growers.  I don't know about the folks
that sell  insecticides and Bt corn seed.

I should have known better than predicting a "low" corn borer year.  After all, the moth flight
at the farm this year was somewhere in-between the 1996 and 1997 outbreak year moth
flights.

It was the cold and windy weather that confused me.  Yeah.  Right.

Just a reminder that we are talking about the first-brood corn borer in the bivoltine areas.
And, again, the univoltine moth flight to the north has just started.  We will know how high
the moth numbers get within the next two weeks.  In case you have forgotten, univoltine
corn borers are found in northern locations like Aberdeen, Ipswich, Redfield, Watertown,
and Brookings.  Those of you who are new to the state, make sure that you know how
to scout for univoltine corn borers by asking your friendly SDSU county educator or an
experienced crop consultant.

For more information, kindly peruse my corn borer Web site.  Notice also that there are
a number of new corn borer insecticides.  Some of them performed quite well last season
(2002) against the first-brood bivoltine and univoltine larvae.

Also on the Web written by news editor Lance Nixon:  Inspect Corn For Corn Borers,
as well as some archived stuff that I wrote last year (2002):  Corn Borers Are Back.

I will let you know how the univoltines develop by next week, or you may follow the moth
flights at the Corn Borer Tracking Project on this Web site.

See you in the cornfield.
 

 Last Updated on Monday, July 28, 2003 by Mike Catangui.