Corn rootworm (CRW) populations appear to be increasing the last few years with reports of poor Bt-RW trait performance and prospective Bt-RW resistance also rising. Scouting CRW beetles is the best way to assess risk of corn rootworm damage to the next corn crop in that field. One way to do this is by placing a series of yellow sticky traps in post-silking corn fields and counting the beetles captured.
For the past few years, Dr. Ken Ostlie and Bruce Potter have been involved in a project to determine whether sticky trap data from individual fields can be combined to draw inferences on general geographic and historical trends of CRW populations and Bt resistance. Because of differences in rootworm population densities and in management practices such as planting date, Bt traits, and insecticides, they need observations from a large number of fields to do these analyses.
Participate in this research
- If you would like to run a CRW trapline(s) but need traps, they can supply trapping kits (first come/first serve basis), recommended sampling procedures and a data entry spreadsheet.
- If you have purchased your own traps to sample CRW and would be willing to share data for fields where a minimum of 3-4 traps were checked weekly for a 3–4-week period after silking, it will be appreciated.
- If you so choose, you have the option to contribute data to a multi-state CRW monitoring network.
You will have the management information derived from the fields you trapped. Individual field locations will not be made public and only composite images of risk geography will be shared among cooperators.
If you would like to participate, or have questions, email [email protected] or [email protected].
This project is funded, in part, by Minnesota farm families and their checkoff dollars.