Super corn borer resistant to Bt corn could infect Eastern Ontario first

WINCHESTER — European corn borer is becoming resistant to the Bt corn varieties that have effectively repelled the pest for 25 years, and Eastern Ontario producers are likely to see it munching on their crop first before it attacks anywhere else in the province, attendees were told at the 2023 Eastern Ontario Crop Diagnostic Day at OMAFRA’s Winchester research station.

While the corn borer larvae and moth was first discovered in Canada about 100 years ago, the Bt-corn resistant borer, which first turned up in a Nova Scotia cornfield in 2018, has since been found in New Brunswick and in the Montreal area, according to presenters Tracey Baute, an OMAFRA entomologist, and Jocelyn Smith, entomology research scientist at the University of Guelph. It’s the corn borer larvae that bores into the corn stalk and causes rotting.

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