Insect Pest Update For Sep. 8, 2016

Sep 09, 2016

By Sean Malone

White sugarcane aphid, Melanaphis sacchari, in sorghum: I did not receive any reports of this aphid being found in any new Virginia counties this week.

Brown marmorated stink bug in soybean: Our scouts reported 11 Virginia counties having threshold levels of BMSB, with highest numbers from Bedford and Orange (9 and 6 BMSB per 2-minute visual inspection, respectively). First reports for the season came from James City, King George, Culpeper, and Frederick. Please see the following map:

Kudzu bug in soybean: Our scouts have not found any Virginia counties with threshold levels of this pest in 2016. The current map:

Corn earworm/bollworm (Helicoverpa zea) resistance monitoring: The number of moths surviving the 24-hour exposure to 5 micrograms of cypermethrin in this week’s vial tests was 45.8% (n = 180 moths evaluated). The seasonal average is 43.4% survival, based on 1,255 moths tested.

Black light trap counts: Corn earworm moth captures dropped slightly from the previous weeks’ counts; brown marmorated stink bug counts were zero across all reporting stations.

Source: vt.edu

Video: EP 65 Grazing Through Drought

Welcome to the conclusion of the Getting Through Drought series, where we look at the best management practices cow-calf producers in Alberta can use to build up their resiliency against drought.

Our hope is that the series can help with the mental health issues the agriculture sector is grappling with right now. Farming and ranching are stressful businesses, but that’s brought to a whole new level when drought hits. By equipping cow-calf producers with information and words of advice from colleagues and peers in the sector on the best ways to get through a drought, things might not be as stressful in the next drought. Things might not look so bleak either.

In this final episode of the series, we are talking to Ralph Thrall of McIntyre Ranch who shares with us his experience managing grass and cows in a pretty dry part of the province.