Entomology Update 5-14-25: Thrips in Early Cotton, Stink Bugs and Bollworm in Corn

This week, Drs. Ben Thrash and Nick Bateman discuss current insect pest issues in early cotton, corn, and more.

Transcript

[00:00] Intro/Outro

Arkansas Row Crops Radio, providing up to date information and timely recommendations on row crop production in Arkansas.

[00:11] Ben Thrash

Hey everybody! Today is May 14th and there's a couple things going on. Not just a whole lot, but it doesn't sound like there's a lot going on in rice right now. You want to talk about that?

[00:27] Nick Bateman

We went around late last week, earlier this week, and looked at a few of these fields right around the station here that went flood over the past 5 or 10 days. Somewhere in there. And, you know, keep your mind to there's a lot of these fields aren't near tree lines kind of out in the open, typically don't have very high weevil pressure. And, you know, we went out there with some sweep nets and we're catching levels that don't really concern me, to be honest with you. Now, I don't know that that's necessarily a predictor for what we're going to see over the next month as we flood up a lot more of this rice but, you know, generally they get worse later in the season, but at least initially, it's nothing alarming. It looks like a fairly average year, you know. But outside of that, I mean I ain't had no calls or anything in riceyou know, there's a lot of cut worms and stuff in at this time last year. And I hadn’t had none of them calls so far this year.

[01:23] Ben Thrash

Yeah. And it just sounds like we're getting our some of our cotton up out of the ground now. And what I'm hearing is that the thrips seem pretty bad, especially up in northern Arkansas. So be on the lookout for thrips. You know, we got quite a bit of that acephate and bidrin resistance in that in our populations, especially in northern and central, Arkansas or the northern central Delta. You know, south Arkansas, that seems like the resistance is lesser. So you might get away with a acephate or bidrin shot if your thrips ain't too bad. But, I'm probably sticking with the intrepid Edge if I was going to go out. And remember, if you're running Intrepid Edge that right on, be three ounces and remember to run a surfactant with it. You get a huge increase in control, running a surfactant with with Intrepid Edge. So just keep that in mind. If you're going out with something like Roundup or Liberty, something that’s got a high surfactant load, you don't need to add, a surfactant to that. So just kind of keep that in mind. Nick, I've heard about…

[02:39] Nick Bateman

Well, Ben, on thrips, if we catch that inch, inch and a half of rain this weekend, do you think that’s going to benefit us at all there?

[02:50] Ben Thrash

Shoot, I doubt it. You know I hope this hot weather, it’ll warm up a little bit and we'll actually get some of the stuff growing.

[02:58] Nick Bateman

Yeah. They don't seem to be as affected as mites are.

[03:02] Ben Thrash

Yeah. It seems like a lot of stuff. Just kind of been sitting there with, this cool weather not really growing off good. And that's kind of the thing on the corn, too. I'm still hearing about stink bugs on corn. I had a call today, and I know you said you had a couple calls on stink bugs on corn.

[03:23] Nick Bateman

Yeah, but, I mean, to be honest with you, a lot of them's kind of postmortem. You know, a lot of that damage probably occurred a week or to two weeks prior to when we're actually seeing it out there. I mean, and it's the same story about not seeing any stink bugs out there. You know, it seems like a lot of the corn driving down the road might be outside of that stink bug window right now, but if we got small corn. I'd be checking pretty dang hard out there right now, because it seems like there's a lot, a lot of them out there.

[03:56] Ben Thrash

Yeah. For sure. So once it gets two feet tall, you know, there's really nothing you can you can do about it. Most of that injury I think occurs V4, V6 somewhere in there. So once that corn gets some, gets some size on it, you know, there's nothing really you can do and like Nick said, a lot of this is just kind of postmortem. It's too late to do anything about it. In some cases, so. But, you know, this, this warm weather hopefully allow that corn to grow and get out of a vulnerable growth stage. You know, for them stink bugs. But I also heard a little bit about some true army worms clipping some heads if you had any, had any wheat anything like that. So keep that in mind if you're if you're scouting any of those.

[04:49] Nick Bateman

The other thing to mention on corn. Not that we can do much about it, but, you know, the folks down in northeast Louisiana told us what was up maybe two weeks ago or so. They were finding some boll worms in whorl stage corn and had a few phone calls late last week, early this week about finding them. I mean, it's going to be similar to what we see with army worms where it's going to take, you know, what is it 3 to 5 per whorl to really cause any yield loss. Yeah. The the other thing is you know with boll worm, you almost got to run something like a besiege, vantacor, or something like that to really get good control and the odd of you blowing it down into that whorl and getting it to them is pretty slim. 

[05:32] Ben Thrash

Yeah. I mean, you got to get it, you got to get it down in there. And honestly, my experience with trying to spray any caterpillars in whorl stage corn has always been really poor. Just you don't get control, you can't get it to them and then they don't cause any yield loss anyway. So it's kind of pointless to to spray them. But anyways, that's about all I got, Nick.

[06:03] Nick Bateman

Yeah. I think we mentioned last week, a few phone calls about still seeing stink bugs out there in wheat and I mean, it's going to take so many of them it’s probably not worth praying them, to be honest with you. Yeah. But there are quite a few out there. I have no idea how that's going to relate later in the year. We've seen a lot in wheat and very little in rice, and we've seen the opposite, and we've seen them both lined up. So there's no real prediction that they can be made off of that.

[06:34] Ben Thrash

Yeah. Well, you know, Plinazolin, the new product from Syngenta, it's comment period has just opened on the EPA's website and I need to post a link on x. So anybody that you know if, if that product or benefits you, somehow for that comment period I think closes June 11th. I think I remember right, so you know, it'd be beneficial to, to comment on how that product would, would help you, control plant bugs, especially in, in cotton. Plant bugs, spider mites, thrips, things like that. So might be worth, worth commenting. And, hope to get that label pushed there. But that's about all I got, Nick.

[07:31] Nick Bateman

Yeah, that's about all that's going on right now.

[07:34] Ben Thrash

Yeah, but well, if you need, just call us. My number is (501) 517-3853.

[07:41] Nick Bateman

Mine’s 870-456-8486.

[07:46] Ben Thrash

Thank you very much.

[07:49] Intro/Outro

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