In this Issue:
FEATURE ARTICLE
New Tools Available for Monitoring Corn Earworm Flights
VEGETABLE NEWS
STRAWBERRY NEWS
MFVGA 2007 Summer Tour and Picnic
APPLE NEWS
NOTE: The Newsletter will be on hiatus for the next two weeks. Our next edition will be August 10th.
| Vol 4 No. 9 | July 20, 2007 |
New Tools Available for Monitoring Corn Earworm Flights:
Watch for an Increase in Trap Catch, Late July-Early August
Bill Hutchison, Eric Burkness, Dept. of Entomology, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN
Shelby Fleischer, Dept. of Entomology, Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA
This is the time of year when sweet corn growers might start sweating a little more than average. The Corn Earworm (CEW) is set to migrate north to the Midwest and Northeast, from various crops in the Southern U.S. All sweet corn harvested to date, and fields expected to be harvested within the next week should be able to “escape” most of the CEW pressure for the year. The primary crops at risk, including snap beans, tomatoes and peppers, all harvested after August 1st, will be most vulnerable to the typical late-season flights. Clearly, silking sweet corn is most attractive, but the other crops should be monitored closely when sweet corn silks begin to dry down. This week, we review two complementary, on-line, web friendly tools that can assist growers, and IPM decision-makers with improved timing of CEW treatments for selected crops.
CEW Migration Forecasts: Last month, we mentioned the “Insect Migration Risk Forecast” (IMRF), developed at Northern Illinois University by Mike Sandstrom and Dave Changnon. They now have a new web site (AWARE, http://agweather.niu.edu/) for quick access the daily forecasts. If you wish to subscribe to their email list, to receive the daily forecasts, send a note to: Mike at: wxtrw44@yahoo.com.
Fig. 1. Recent Midwest, Insect Migration Risk Forecast (IMRF)
Mike Sandstrom, Dave Changnon, Northern Illinois University
PestWatch Goes National: Web Tracking of CEW Flights-- This week, we are excited to debut “PestWatch” a greatly expanded National Corn Earworm Monitoring tool, for rapid, real-time delivery of CEW flight updates, now available for the Midwest, Southern and Eastern U.S. (Figure 2). This effort is based upon early work by Dr. Shelby Fleischer, Entomologist, Penn State University, and several database/web design colleagues, including: Steve Crawford, Jon Voortman and Doug Miller, all at PSU. This team, with considerable input from extension and industry colleagues, in the Midwest and Southern states, as well as many new Trap Cooperators, have made this new tool possible.
PestWatch takes advantage of state-of-the-art, web-based data-entry and animation tools, to quickly track CEW population dynamics during the summer months. As CEW is a highly mobile and economically damaging pest of many crops throughout the U.S. and Canada, it is critical to understand how populations are developing on multiple hosts in real-time. Having this information more readily available will assist researchers, extension staff and industry in better understanding CEW dynamics at regional, landscape levels, as well as in farm-level IPM decision-making. For example, in the upper Midwest, it is very useful to know when CEW moth flights begin to increase in the High Plains of Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Kansas, as these areas have been implicated in previous years as “source populations” for some of the migrant moth populations we have trapped up north. Specifically, this week, both the CEW Forecast and PestWatch were useful in characterizing the current low risk of new CEW flights to the Midwest (Fig. 1). However, because a dominant source region is currently southwestern Kansas, the recent increase in CEW flights in Kansas (> 75 moths/night), indicates this region has considerable potential for being a significant source when weather conditions become favorable for northerly migration (e.g., Low pressure system from the west, converging with a High pressure from the east).
In future years, we plan to expand this to other Lepidopteran pests, and currently have data locations for European corn borer and the Fall Armyworm (Northeast). The site can be viewed at: http://www.pestwatch.psu.edu/sweetcorn/tool/tool.html.
Note: After accessing the PestWatch page, move the timebar to relevant periods. To facilitate variation in thresholds, the class breaks in the legend is adjustable by the user, and resulting colors tied to the time-series histograms that open when you click on any site.
Suggestions or questions can be sent to: Fleischer (sjf4@psu.edu), or Hutchison (hutch002@umn.edu).
Acknowledgements: In addition Doug Miller’s group within the Environmental Center for Informatics (PSU), and the numerous trap catch coordinators, who have made the PestWatch expansion possible, we also acknowledge funding support from: North Central IPM Regional Center (MSU & UofIL), Rapid Agricultural Response Fund of the University of Minnesota Agric. Expt. Station, Insecticide Resistance Action Committee (IRAC), Midwest Food Processors Assoc. (MWFPA), Minnesota Department of Agriculture, and the Pennsylvania State University Experiment Station.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Co-Editors: Bill Hutchison (hutch002@umn.edu), Department of Entomology, University of Minnesota, Jeanne Ciborowski, Minnesota Department of Agriculture, Ag. Resources Management and Development Division, and Suzanne Wold-Burkness (woldx018@umn.edu), Department of Entomology, University of Minnesota
The Newsletter is published weekly from May through August, cooperatively, by the Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) and the University of Minnesota (U of MN). Reports are posted on the U of MN and MDA web sites on Fridays. If you have suggestions and/or comments, please send your contributions by 4 p.m., Wednesday to Jeanne Ciborowski, 651-201-6217, jeanne.ciborowski@state.mn.us , MDA, 625 Robert St. North, St. Paul, MN 55155. You can access the Newsletter at the U of MN web site in htm format at: www.vegedge.umn.edu/MNFruit&VegNews/mnindex.htm and at the MDA web site in pdf format at: www.mda.state.mn.us/plants/pestmanagement/ipm/ipmnews.htm
Partial funding for this publication is provided through partnership agreements with the Minnesota Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association (MFVGA) and the United States Department of Agriculture – Risk Management Agency (RMA). These institutions are equal opportunity providers.
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Last Revised July, 2007 by woldx018@umn.edu
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