The latest Talking News Release we distributed this week was from Monsanto. The topic was research from their sticky traps program to see if western corn rootworm beetles are present in soybean fields. I think this is a very interesting story. These western corn rootworm “variants” have adapted their reproductive practices by laying their eggs in soybean fields in order to survive field rotations between corn and soybeans. The variant eggs hatch during the spring, after the field has been rotated back to corn, resulting in larval feeding in first-year corn, which is not a good thing. These are some smart pests!
A sticky trap monitoring program conducted recently by Monsanto suggests that the western corn rootworm variant may continue to be expanding, posing a potential threat to first-year corn next season.
Monsanto distributed 28,000 Pherocon® AM sticky traps to 3600 growers in parts of five Central Corn Belt states – Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Missouri – where the rootworm variant has been expanding. Growers participating in the monitoring program, which covered more than 10 million acres, were asked to place the sticky traps in their soybean fields to determine whether the rootworm beetles are present and at what level.
“What our results showed was that in 90 percent of the counties that we sent sticky traps into farmers did capture the western corn rootworm beetle on these sticky traps,” said Dave Rhylander, Director of Traits for Monsanto. “And so that tells us this bug continues to move east, and to the west and to the south, and that it’s now expanded further than anybody had anticipated.” Full Release