Pest and Disease Monitoring May 24, 2022
Erik Smith, Area Field Crop Specialist/Team Leader
Central New York Dairy and Field Crops
Still no leafhoppers in alfalfa, but I have seen some alfalfa weevil damage in a few fields that were farther along. Going forward I will monitor several fields around the region for this pest.
This year we will again monitor for several pests of corn using pheromone-baited traps, including black cutworm (BCW), western bean cutworm (WBC), and true armyworm (TAW). We monitor BCW and TAW populations first, then transition to BCW and TAW through the middle part of the season, and we may eventually track fall armyworm (FAW) at some point this year as well. So stay tuned.
This week, all of our traps yielded BCW, but TAW populations are still thankfully AWOL. The last of our traps went up this week, so the first results from those will be reported next week:
As winter grains such as barley and wheat begin to flower, now would be the time to decide whether to protect crops from fusarium head blight. According to the Fusarium Risk Tool, the risk in our region is currently low, except for perhaps eastern Fulton County, where the risk is medium if your crops are currently flowering:
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Forages
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