Although some other states in the US corn belt, and in Ontario, Canada are seeing high moth flights (and we thought Indiana would follow suit), Indiana is a “have-not” state for WBC this year. Thanks to our network of pheromone trap cooperators throughout the state, we were able to assess the flight of western bean cutworm moths the last seven weeks. As you can see from the graph below, this year’s numbers have been much lower, though the peak period of mid-July remained relatively consistent. The accompanying good news is that larval damage reports, so far, have been zero. The reasons why are unclear – the moths overwinter as pre-pupae, and our winter was not atypically cold. But the trend of low damage (regardless of trap catch) across Indiana persists, and this is the good news here.
Hopefully we can convince the trappers to again monitor for this pest next season, to determine if this decline is a trend or is a one-year blip on the curve!
