West Texas Agricultural Chemicals Institute's 2021 meeting is scheduled for September 14th at the FiberMax Center for Discovery in Lubbock (1121 Canyon Lake Drive). Link to online registration: https://wtaci.eventsmart.com/ Onsite registration begins at 7:30 am on 14th September.    ..read more

It has been a fairly quiet summer so far in corn and sorghum, but that seems to be changing now. Independent crop consultants reported finding sugarcane aphid colonies in sorghum in southern Hale County earlier in the week, and we had no trouble finding them at the Halfway Experiment Station today. I also found them at the Lubbock Research and Extension Center on the first sorghum leaf I looked at. These were small colonies of 100 or so immature aphids surrounding one adult. At Lubbock we are just now starting to get small amounts of honeydew accumulation. It is time to start scouting your sor ..read more

We live in a time of fake news; coverage designed to mislead and advocate one viewpoint. No, I don't need any scientific citations to back this claim up; we all know it is true. I'm writing tonight to bring a very balanced and well-referenced article to your attention, one that deals with the benefits and downsides of the seed treatments put on our corn, cotton, soybean and other seed.  Beginning around 15 years ago, seed treatments became commonplace on corn seed, and it is now virtually impossible for High Plains growers to buy any seed without these treatments. Research has shown that ..read more

There have been several reports of treatable levels of cotton fleahoppers in cotton. Herbicide applications and destruction of weed hosts is likely behind increased fleahopper activity in cotton at some locations. Cotton fleahoppers can cause substantial square loss if present in sufficient numbers especially during the first three weeks of squaring. They are much smaller in size than the lygus bug and are pale green in color. Both adults and immatures feed on small squares, causing them to shed. When scouting it is important to visually examine the terminal of plants which is where fleahopper ..read more

Corn and sorghum withstood our severe weather quite well this spring, and most fields got a good start. The first cloud is now on the horizon because fall armyworm pheromone trap captures are unusually high; 7.7x the 10 year average. The graphic below shows this year's captures and the 10-year average for my traps at the Lubbock Research and Extension Center.  Whorl stage sorghum and corn take take a lot of leaf damage, perhaps 30% tissue loss before yields are affected. (This number is shaky and has little research behind it.) These big flights in late spring were uncommon prior to abou ..read more

Texas A&M Extension Entomology has been conducting a joint research project with Dr. Elson Shields from Cornell University for the last four years. We have shown that persistent, insect-killing nematodes (that are harmless to plants) have the ability to lower corn root damage whether the crop is Bt or non-Bt. And these nematodes persist for many years and just keep killing, even across crop rotations.  Our research at Dalhart was featured in a DTN/Progressive Farmer article last year under the title "Invasion of the Rootworm Snatchers", and it will give you an idea of what these nemat ..read more

 My recent post discussed the proposal by EPA to drastically change the resistance management regulations around Bt corn and cotton. You can submit a comment here before November 9th. The proposal is hard to find on the EPA website, so I have reposted it here.  Part of the plan is to phase out all single toxin Bt corn hybrids within three years, and all pyramid (multi-toxin) hybrids that do not contain Vip3a within five years.  Assuming we don't get any wonderful new technology in the next few years, this would leave southern corn growers with two choice ..read more

This week the EPA released a draft plan that essentially overhauls many of the regulations around insect resistance management (IRM) in Bt crops grown in the "cotton belt".  There are many major changes proposed, one of which is that field failures are presumed to be cases of "practical resistance" if certain criteria are met. (Like 6% boll damage in third generation (Vip) cotton and second instar bollworm larvae are present, which is basically the treatment threshold we use now.) Seed companies can then make collections and do the insect rearing and testing to refute the determination of ..read more

Dr. Suhas Vyavhare and I are conducting a very detailed experiment this year on some aspects of Bt corn. Part of the experiment involves putting 120 emergence cages on the ground under corn after corn earworm larvae (cotton bollworms) have left the corn ears and entered the soil for pupation. This lets us determine the number of moths being produced per square foot or acre under actual field conditions. After they emerge as moths, these insects will then fly to other crops, and their eggs become the late season bollworm infestations in cotton and headworm infestations in sorghum.  2020 wa ..read more

Sesame leafroller is a major pest of the crop, and we have tracked its movement north this year. This is a new pest for us. Dr. Emi Kimura, our agronomist in Vernon, reported it last week. This week Drs. Qingwu Xue and Jourdan Bell reported it at Bushland, and one of our superb Independent Crop Consultants reported it at Abernathy just north of Lubbock and made comment that he treated the field three weeks ago and now had to treat again. He also just today reported it near Gruver in the northern Panhandle. Dr. Holly Davis, Extension Entomologist in Weslaco, recently posted a nice blog art ..read more