Although some other states in the corn belt, and to the north in Ontario, Canada are seeing high moth flights (and we thought Indiana would follow suit), as it turns out, 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 intact. Certainly, the accompanying good news is that larval damage reports, so far, have essentially been zero.
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.
