Corn School: Taking a Bite Out of Western Bean Cutworm

by

Western bean cutworm took a big bite out of many Ontario cornfields in 2016 as high populations of the pest caused increased levels of fusarium and gibberella ear rot.

With the pest expected to overwinter and be a threat again in 2017, many growers are asking whether they need to spray and when. Real Agriculture agronomist Peter Johnson found some answers at the recent Southwest Agricultural Conference, held at the University of Guelph’s Ridgetown campus, where he caught up with Michigan State entomologist Chris DiFonzo.

In this episode of Real Agriculture Corn School DiFonzo tells Johnson why it’s so important to effectively scout for WBC and correctly calculate threshold levels. She also shares some neat tips on how growers can practice scouting for WBC and zeros in on the most effective spray timing. DiFonzo says it’s important to identify peak flight of moths because that’s when you still have some pre-tassel and tasselled corn and most of the egg masses are hatching. Once WBC are in the cob, you can’t control them.

Click here for more Corn School episodes.

Wake up with RealAgriculture

Subscribe to our daily newsletters to keep you up-to-date with our latest coverage every morning.

Wake up with RealAgriculture

Other Episodes

Corn School (view all)Season 6 (2017) Episode 30
Episodes:

Please register to read and comment.

Privacy Preference Center

Necessary

Necessary cookies help make a website usable by enabling basic functions like page navigation and access to secure areas of the website. The website cannot function properly without these cookies.

gdpr, __cfduid, PHPSESSID, wordpress_test_cookie, woocommerce_items_in_cart, woocommerce_cart_hash, wp_woocommerce_session, wordpress_logged_in, wordpress_sec, wp-settings, wp-settings-time, __cf_mob_redir, wordpress_cache, realag
__cfduid

Marketing

Measuring interactions with the ads on the domain.

__gads,fsk_ut_2317
IDE

Statistics

These are used to track user interaction and detect potential problems. These help us improve our services by providing analytical data on how users use this site.

_ga,_gid,_gat,_cb,_chartbeat2,_chartbeat4
_ga,_gid
metrics_token

Preferences

Preference cookies enable the website to remember information that changes the way the website behaves or looks, like your preferred language or the region that you are in.

chartdefaults, comment_author, comment_author_email, comment_author_url
JSESSIONID, _os_session,anonymous_votes,csrf-param,csrf-token,user,user-id,user-platform,intercom-session,intercom-lou,intercom-session
personalization_id, tfw_exp

 

Register for a RealAgriculture account to manage your Shortcut menu instead of the default.

Register