Stink Bugs:  These guys can cause serious injury to small corn plants.  Although this is relatively uncommon in Tennessee, there have been several reports of injury to early planted corn.  I expected some of this given the unusual number of stink bugs observed in wheat.  The brown stink bug is the usual culprit, but green stink bugs may cause similar injury.  Rice stink bugs are NOT a threat.  The normal treatment threshold is to treat when 10% of plants are infested.  They can be surprising difficult to find, so it requires some dilligent looking.  Damaged plants will be stunted and “bushy” in appearance, often with rows of elongate lesions (holes) across the leaves.

 

Sugarcane Beetles:  I’ve received more and more calls ranging from south of Nashville to the Ripley area about sugarcane beetles. Problems are spotty and infestations vary quite a bit in intensity, but a few fields have been devastated. There is little else I can add to my previous comments (linked below). I will suggest that everyone scout their fields for potential problems.  As I said last week, foliar insecticides sometimes provide partial control, but there are no guarantees. This is pretty much a spray and cross your fingers situation.  If you are going to spray, make sure not to use cut rates and use as much volume as you can stand.  Thus far, the one report I’ve had did NOT indicate a very noticeable improvement of infestation levels following an application of Lorsban.  I included a couple of new pictures below.