July has really arrived: Head scab covers state

I can’t believe that July 4 is here already! Yes, it has been a try­ing crop sea­son so far, but we have made it to sum­mer. With all the cool wet weather it seems that we didn’t have a spring. But with the heat fore­casted for next week it looks like sum­mer is here.

The wheat is start­ing to come off around the county and there is head scab and pos­si­ble vom­i­toxin present in some of the fields. We just fin­ished our wheat head scab sur­veys last week and it seems like there is head scab across the state. Statewide, some exten­sion edu­ca­tors reported fields with as much as 45 per­cent effected wheat. We seem to be much bet­ter here in Delaware County. The fields I checked ranged between 4 per­cent and 21 per­cent, with most of the fields below 10 per­cent effected wheat heads. How­ever, if you think you might have some wheat scab and vom­i­tioxin, to help pre­vent dock­age, try to har­vest grain from scabby fields sep­a­rately from more healthy fields, and turn up the com­bine fan to blow out scabby, light­weight grain. Also, have grain for fields with scab tested for vom­i­toxin before feed­ing it to live­stock since sev­eral ani­mals, par­tic­u­larly swine, may have seri­ous health prob­lems if fed grain with high lev­els of vomitoxin.

The OSU Exten­sion Ento­mol­ogy Field Crop Team, along with Ron Ham­mond and Andy Michel have been mon­i­tor­ing the West­ern Bean Cut­worm through­out Ohio over the past few weeks. There have been 128 west­ern bean cut­worm traps placed all across the state to mon­i­tor for flight this year. We are mon­i­tor­ing three traps around Delaware county.

Last week, a few coun­ties reported some catches, with Hardin County being the clos­est one to us. This fol­lows with obser­va­tions from other east­ern Great Lakes regions who have also caught moths. Most of the corn is very late planted, from V2 –V5, and is at risk for infes­ta­tion (once corn tas­sels, it is a less pre­ferred host), accord­ing to Hammond.

Even in whorl stage, lar­vae can bur­row through leaves and feed on the devel­op­ing tas­sel. As we are likely at least a cou­ple of weeks away, it is not too late to put out traps to mon­i­tor the flight near your corn fields to know when to start scout­ing corn. Scout­ing for eggs and lar­vae should begin when adult catches occur on con­sec­u­tive nights. Inspect 20 plants in five ran­dom loca­tions through­out a field. Female moths pre­fer to lay eggs on the upper­most leaves which are still ver­ti­cal in ori­en­ta­tion, so those leaves should be inspected thor­oughly. If west­ern bean cut­worm eggs are found, please give me a call.

Rob Leeds is an OSU Exten­sion Edu­ca­tor for Agriculture/NR.

Posted by Rob Leeds on Jul 2 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.