European Corn Borer Field Day Set for July 17 near Ames

Jun 04, 2024

By Erin Hodgson and Ashley Dean et.al

A pest that most corn farmers haven’t had to worry about since the late 1990s appears to be making a comeback.

European corn borer (ECB) has largely been controlled thanks to Bacillus thuringiensis corn (better known as Bt corn), which was first introduced in 1996. But field-evolved resistance is showing up in several Canadian provinces and most recently, in Connecticut.

In an effort to address the issue and train crop scouts on what to look for, entomology experts with Iowa State University Extension and Outreach and the United States Department of Agriculture are teaming up to offer a special field day July 17 west of Ames.

A day-long educational program will be held at the Field Extension Education Laboratory, located at 1928 240th St. near Boone.

Expert insight

Erin Hodgson, professor and extension entomologist at Iowa State, and Ashley Dean, extension education specialist, will lead participants through educational sessions that include an industry update, as well as hands-on trapping and detection, and first- and second-generation scouting.

They will be joined by Tom Sappington, Brad Coates and Craig Abel – all entomologists with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service.

“This educational event will explain how to detect European corn borer, why it’s showing up again and what agronomists and crop consultants can do to help safeguard the industry,” said Hodgson. “It’s been so long since it was an issue that many people may have forgotten what it looks like, or that it even still exists.”

Before the development of Bt seeds, ECB was estimated to have cost U.S. farmers over a billion dollars annually in yield losses and control efforts, earning it the title “the billion-dollar bug.”

It is estimated that just one corn borer can cause 3-5% yield loss, and multiple borers can wipe out a crop. Hodgson and Dean want to remind farmers and those who advise them of what to look for and how to do their part to prevent an infestation from starting.

Their best advice is to plant pyramid Bt hybrids to ensure multiple toxins are contributing to ECB control. They also advise farmers to conserve beneficial insects and shred or bury corn residue to reduce the survival of overwintering larvae within fields.

Hodgson and Dean provide further information in an Integrated Crop Management news article they co-authored in May 2024 called Blast from the Past: European Corn Borer is Back on the Radar.

Registration details

The field day is free to attend and lunch and continuing education credits will be provided. Registration is required by July 10 and can be done online at https://go.iastate.edu/YUV5EL

Participants need only to register for one session, as both sessions feature the same topics. For assistance with registration or questions about the program, contact Erin Hodgson at ewh@iastate.edu or 515-294-2847. Ashley Dean can be reached at adean@iastate.edu or 515-447-3766.

Source : iastate.edu

Video: Why Your Food Future Could be Trapped in a Seed Morgue

In a world of PowerPoint overload, Rex Bernardo stands out. No bullet points. No charts. No jargon. Just stories and photographs. At this year’s National Association for Plant Breeding conference on the Big Island of Hawaii, he stood before a room of peers — all experts in the science of seeds — and did something radical: he showed them images. He told them stories. And he asked them to remember not what they saw, but how they felt.

Bernardo, recipient of the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award, has spent his career searching for the genetic treasures tucked inside what plant breeders call exotic germplasm — ancient, often wild genetic lines that hold secrets to resilience, taste, and traits we've forgotten to value.

But Bernardo didn’t always think this way.

“I worked in private industry for nearly a decade,” he recalls. “I remember one breeder saying, ‘We’re making new hybrids, but they’re basically the same genetics.’ That stuck with me. Where is the new diversity going to come from?”

For Bernardo, part of the answer lies in the world’s gene banks — vast vaults of seed samples collected from every corner of the globe. Yet, he says, many of these vaults have quietly become “seed morgues.” “Something goes in, but it never comes out,” he explains. “We need to start treating these collections like living investments, not museums of dead potential.”

That potential — and the barriers to unlocking it — are deeply personal for Bernardo. He’s wrestled with international policies that prevent access to valuable lines (like North Korean corn) and with the slow, painstaking science of transferring useful traits from wild relatives into elite lines that farmers can actually grow. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But he’s convinced that success starts not in the lab, but in the way we communicate.

“The fact sheet model isn’t cutting it anymore,” he says. “We hand out a paper about a new variety and think that’s enough. But stories? Plants you can see and touch? That’s what stays with people.”

Bernardo practices what he preaches. At the University of Minnesota, he helped launch a student-led breeding program that’s working to adapt leafy African vegetables for the Twin Cities’ African diaspora. The goal? Culturally relevant crops that mature in Minnesota’s shorter growing season — and can be regrown year after year.

“That’s real impact,” he says. “Helping people grow food that’s meaningful to them, not just what's commercially viable.”

He’s also brewed plant breeding into something more relatable — literally. Coffee and beer have become unexpected tools in his mission to make science accessible. His undergraduate course on coffee, for instance, connects the dots between genetics, geography, and culture. “Everyone drinks coffee,” he says. “It’s a conversation starter. It’s a gateway into plant science.”