Rambling Thoughts About the 2017 Weather and Tarnished Plant Bugs in Cotton

I will say up front that no two seasons are exactly alike when considering the weather, crop conditions, and potential insect damage. 2017 has already been uniquely different than any season I remember. Delayed planting, excessive rainfall, mild winter, and warm spring are just a few of the factors that could affect the movement, numbers, and level of damage from plant bugs to this year's cotton crop. Only by close monitoring of plant bug numbers and their damage over the next 4-6 weeks will we know how to deal with this pest.

We need to begin sampling the oldest and largest cotton immediately with sweep nets for adult tarnished plant bugs. In addition, we should keep check on our square set by making pinhead square retention counts. 80% retention is considered our treatment threshold. In other words, we do not want to lose more than 20% of our small squares to plant bug damage.

If past history is any help, abundant to excessive rainfall in June tends to keep wild host plants like fleabane fresh a little longer. This slows or prolongs the movement of plant bugs into cotton. After fleabane dries down, no other wild host is attractive to adult plant bugs, therefore cotton is the best host they have. The movement of plant bugs into cotton has already begun. This migration could continue for several weeks. This slow extended migration may not reach what we would call a threshold or treatable level, making treatment decisions difficult. In hot, dry springs, these adult plant bugs leave fleabane in high numbers over a relatively short period of time, say 7-14 days. This sort of rapid movement into cotton is easier to detect and to make treatment decisions for.

There are a number of other factors that could influence the severity of the plant bug issue in cotton this season. Overall, I would estimate that the maturity of our cotton is a little behind where it normally is this time of year. Will plant bugs move past these fields in search of the oldest most mature cotton? April cotton may serve as a trap crop for plant bugs in 2017. That would be to our advantage. Since early June, we have had a lot of cloudy days with temperatures in the 70s or 80s. Plant bug survival on cotton has likely been higher under these conditions. This could spell higher damage levels in coming weeks. Plant bug adults, and especially their immature offspring, do not fare well under drought conditions and high temperatures (over 95°F), leaving cotton plants under a stressed and wilted condition.

Water logged spoils, which many fields have had during the month of June, can result in some pinhead square abortion. This effect would be very difficult to separate from plant bug injury. How can we distinguish this square loss from plant bug injury? The easiest way would be to use a sweep net to document that some level of plant bugs are actually in the field. One additional little trick that could help us answer this question was developed by our Arkansas entomology friends several years ago. This technique takes a little time, precision, and magnification. The tool needed would be a "pinhead square slicer." Take a damaged pinhead square from the plant (square will be brown or black in color), use a sharp razor, and slice the square in half. If it aborted due to weather, the inside content will still be present but deteriorating, whereas if it has been damaged by a plant bug, the interior will be hollow. Plant bugs tend to dissolve the contents and suck the interior of the square as food.

Plant bugs will likely be the primary cotton insect focus of entomologists, consultants, scouts, farmers, and other interested parties until well into July this season. We need to recognize this and not allow plant bugs to further limit our maturity and potential yield in 2017.

Insect Update for the Week of July 7

A combination of adult tarnished plant bugs and clumping aphids are being reported from more fields and areas around the state each day. Overall, little rainfall has fallen in about two weeks. Therefore, crops, especially corn and cotton, are under some level of stress. Therefore, most growers are choosing to target both plant bugs and aphids with this application.

I have not had any calls on mites in the past few days but that does not mean that populations are not building in select fields. So far, abamectin at 10 oz. per acre has given good control on mites in treated fields.

Immature plant bugs are present now in the oldest cotton. I have observed several fields where a threshold of three immatures per 5 feet has been recorded on a black drop cloth. When plant bugs become imbedded in cotton in July (all stages present – eggs, immatures and adults) quite often multiple applications are needed to bring the population under control. For those that want to use the IGR Diamond, now is the time to do so. An adulticide plus Diamond, at 6-9 oz. per acre, should give control of the population for 14 plus days. It is my opinion that most of the adult plant bugs have now left wild host plants and are now in cotton. We just don’t seem to get that many moving from corn here in Alabama.

Moth traps in central Alabama captured an abundant number of both bollworm and budworm moths last week. 2014 may be the year that fieldmen, consultants, and scouts really prove their worth. There is just no way to time the appropriate chemistry at the proper time without someone monitoring insects. This looks like an above average insect year for cotton and we haven’t even reached the primary stink bug window yet. In sweeping for adult plant bugs last week, I was capturing brown stink bugs in about every set of sweeps.

Early August Insect Update

It has been a number of days since we last reported on Alabama insects. So what has been happening? First of all, August has been dominated early-on with little insect activity other than the bug complex in cotton. Second has been the weather, we had sun yesterday, August 19, for the first time in about 10 days. During this period, rainfall has been measured in inches varying from low single figures to double digits, depending on the location. Up to 4 inches in a 24 hour period has been common. This has resulted in bridges and roadways being washed out and public schools closing during the beginning of the fall term. Agriculturally wise, sprayers have been unable to get into fields and aerial applicators are over booked. Fortunately, insects have overall been low with just a few exceptions. The bug complex has been over threshold in many but not all cotton fields. In the past few days the caterpillar complex has built to damaging levels in soybeans. Some fields have been sprayed by plane for the lep complex, primarily loopers and velvetbean caterpillars. The heaviest infested fields are those where growers just preventatively added a pyrethroid when they were applying a fungicide.

It has been my experience in research plots that an application of a pyrethroid just prior to an infestation of foliage feeding caterpillars is like throwing gasoline on a fire. We usually see much higher numbers of soybean loopers where a pyrethroid application has been made within the previous 10-14 days. My advice to growers is that if they feel they must add something to their fungicide, just add 2 or 3 ounces of a product like Dimilin which does not disrupt the beneficial insects.

Once we have a damaging level of foliage feeders the first thing we need to do is to quantify the species present and the numbers. Five to seven caterpillars per foot of row will usually result in 30% or more foliage loss and therefore require controls. Treatment thresholds for sweep nets on drill beans are not quite as well defined. However, 2 to 5 per sweep would likely require controls. As to species, velvetbean, green cloverworms, corn earworms (podworms) and stink bugs can all be controlled with a pyrethroid. However, if many soybean loopers are in the mix, then one of the newer lep materials will be required. These are, in chemical alphabetical order: Belt, at 2-3 oz.; Steward at 7 oz.; Intrepid at 4-6 oz.; Prevathon at 18-20 oz.; tracer or Blackhawk at 1.5-2 oz. per acre.

One additional thing should be added about soybean looper control, especially if application is by air. Looper eggs are deposited on the lower leaves of the plant, therefore they infest the plant deep within the canopy. As the larvae mature they feed upward through the canopy. In order for any of the newer chemistry to be effective, the leaf containing the droplet has to be eaten. Therefore, it may take several days to fully suppress a looper population. It has been my experience that the surviving  larvae behind application will be early instar larvae found lower in the canopy. Most of these looper insecticides are very rainfast and have long residual on the leaves, so don’t panic if you see a few small loopers behind an application.

I will be on research farms for the next several days and will get back soon if we see or hear of damaging levels of insects developing.

Weather Conditions and Pest Control

First we will give an overview of weather conditions, especially since this may be impacting some of our insect and pest control decisions in the coming days. After a good moisture and rainfall pattern of about 10-14 days ago, our crops have reached a hot-drought stressed condition at present. The situation is worse in the northern area of the state where less rainfall fell during the last thunderstorm period. I saw corn wilted bad in the Tennessee Valley on Tuesday (June 19).

This droughty situation could well impact spray decisions with pests such as aphids and s. mites in the immediate days ahead. Aphids are building state wide and drought stress plants are where I am more suggestive for chemical controls instead of waiting for the natural fungus.

Tarnished Plant Bug adults are also being reported from some fields from the Tennessee line in the north to the Florida line in the south. Square retention is dropping, especially in fields in South Alabama that are a couple of weeks into bloom – these would be early-mid April planted cotton. Also in these some fields, adult brown stink bugs are being reported. We know from past years what stink bugs do to small thumb sized bolls when no larger ones are present.

If present in cotton, stink bugs will feed on small bolls to develop. Knowing this impacts the chemical that we may want to choose for TPB control. It needs to be a product that also controls or highly suppresses Brown Stink Bugs. The best options here would be Bidrin or a high rate of bifenthrin. Aphids in the picture would further complicate the chemical selected. Of the neonic type products, Centric might be the best choice for Tarnished Plant Bug adults, Brown Stink Bugs and aphids.

Three-Cornered Alfalfa Hopper damage is still evident in cotton, in reddish stunted plants that have a girdled and swollen area around the main stem. However, this damage is old now and most plants are too tough for main stem girdling by the Three-Cornered Alfalfa Hopper.

The biggest insect news of the week in Alabama was the finding of the Kudzu bug in soybeans in Cherokee County, Alabama on June 21. The Kudzu bug had been found in about 25 counties on Kudzu but this was the first find on soybeans. Alabama growers will want to lean heavily on recent research conducted in Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina on this new envasive pest. We need to beef up our scouting on soybeans for this pest – especially the immature stage.

Thrips Damge in Cotton

Thrips pressure is quite variable based on the location and field. The two most significant factors affecting thrips damage seem to be planting date and rainfall. Thrips trials at Prattville, AL, planted on April 16, are showing low to moderate thrips injury even without a foliar application on top of seed treatments at planting. Trials planted a week earlier, April 9, are showing heavy thrips injury behind all seed treatments. Rainfall occurred on all trials during 5 of the first 10 days of May.

Most April-planted cotton should be out of the thrips damage window within 10 days or less. Cotton planted in April had three true leaves or more with the fourth or fifth emerging on May 11.

Growers planting behind the rainfall that occurred between May 7 and May 11 will likely not have to be concerned about making a foliar spray for thrips at the first true leaf stage. Seed treatments alone should provide adequate thrips control.

Cotton up and growing should be beyond grasshopper damage. The concern about pill bug damage in the one field in Talladega County this week turns out to be primarily damage from slugs and not pill bugs.