Maintaining corn yield increases in the presence of new and evolving insect and pathogen pests has required sustained improvements in corn genetics, crop management practices and pesticides. Advances in insect resistant and herbicide tolerant GMO technologies combined with high corn values to create an environment where pest management was taken for granted. Insect, disease and weed control was often handled in a “one size fits all,” prophylactic manner. With more effective pest management and difficulties in interpreting survey data under widespread use of new GMO technologies, long-term, public pest survey efforts were largely abandoned during the late 1990s. This greatly diminished survey activity seemed wise initially, but it reduced our ability to detect and understand how risks from key corn pests were shifting.
This project consists of enhancements to, and the coordination of, ongoing projects for assessing annual corn insect pest and disease risks via specialized surveys. Together, these projects are intended to improve our understanding of spatial and temporal differences in populations of economically important corn insects and plant pathogens in Minnesota. Ultimately, this project should lead to a long-term cooperative effort to predict and quantify changes in losses from corn pests.
In 2022, insect black-light and pheromone traps maintained by project cooperators will be used to quantify moth flight timing for several insect pests such as black cutworm and European corn borer. A fall survey of overwintering European corn borer larvae will provide historical and predictive information on risk from this insect. Estimates of fall-expressing corn diseases and collections of larvae to determine biotypes and/or parasitism and Nosema rates of MN corn borer populations are additional components of this survey. Also, a specialized survey will also be developed to determine the risk from key corn diseases, such as stalk rot and the emerging concern with tar spot (spreading from SE Minn.).
Several members of the project team have Extension appointments and will utilize the results of the project in numerous educational meetings throughout the year as well as through Extension resources, such as MN Crop News to provide grower alerts.