Michael Gray Email

Wheat producers, especially in southwestern Illinois, should be scouting their fields for armyworms and considering the need to apply a rescue treatment. Kevin Black, Insect and Plant Disease Technical Manager, Growmark, Inc., reported on June 7 that large numbers of armyworms were leaving roadside ditches, moving into adjacent wheat fields, and inflicting heavy damage. Armyworm densities and damage in one wheat field located northeast of St. Louis was particularly impressive. Because of the heavy rains this spring and the lack of mowing,…

On June 5, I sampled an alfalfa field in Champaign County and found potato leafhoppers by using a sweep net. These small insects have the potential to cause injury to subsequent cuttings of alfalfa. Typically, the first cutting across much of Illinois is not at economic risk to this migratory pest. Producers are encouraged to scout their fields for potato leafhoppers and recognize that very low densities of these insects equipped with piercing and sucking mouthparts can cause economic losses to alfalfa soon after the first cutting.…

Producers are encouraged to scout both corn and wheat for armyworms and potential feeding. Kevin Black, Insect and Plant Disease Technical Manager with Growmark Inc., reported that a field of corn (Putnam County) planted into a rye cover crop had received some defoliation by armyworms. Kelli Bassett, a Field Agronomist with DuPont Pioneer, observed (May 30) some armyworm feeding in scattered wheat fields across Macoupin and Montgomery counties.
For more information about the biology, life cycle,…

The stormy spring weather across much of the nation’s mid-section continues to cause planting delays. Planting estimates (USDA NASS, May 28, 2013) indicate that approximately 40% of Illinois soybean acres have been planted. Roughly 12% of the soybean crop has emerged across the state. These percentages are well below the five-year averages for Illinois by this date – 53% planted and 28% emerged. As overwintering bean leaf beetles break dormancy and begin to seek out soybean fields,…

The economic impact of the variant western corn rootworm that evolved in the eastern Corn Belt continues to reverberate nearly twenty years later. The overall impact includes yield losses in first-year corn and the additional input costs of Bt seed and/or soil insecticides to rotated corn. In 1995, severe root injury and punishing yield losses occurred in first-year cornfields across east-central Illinois and northern Indiana. These were fields in which the annual rotation of corn and soybeans had rigidly taken place for decades.…