Dr. Angus Catchot reports on bollworm activity in soybeans
Bollworm treatments are continuing to go out on late planted soybeans. While many are treating threshold levels there are some facing unbelievable numbers (greater than 100 per 25 sweeps). We are leaving more worms in the field this year than in years past with straight pyrethroids. Some can be explained with coverage, others cannot. Ryan Jackson’s pyrethroid monitoring is not showing anything unusual in MS to date with respect to resistance, however, LA testing program is showing extremely high levels of survival in their test. There is also budworm populations mixed in at low levels this year in some places (confirmed) and there have been several consultant reports of flushing fairly high levels of budworm moths from soybeans. Budworms generally make up a small percentage of the overall population. Two years ago, we had a population from Clarksdale that was 15% budworms in soybeans. We are seeing better control of bollworms when adding 0.5 lbs of Orthene with the pyrethroid. Although Orthene alone has little to no activity on bollworms in MS, when mixed with a pyrethroid control is better than with either one alone.
