Rice Insect Update

The rice season seems to be getting off to a good start from an insect perspective.  I am not hearing of many problems in seedling rice at this point which is a good thing.  The reason for this post is to give an update on insect pests that we may be seeing in the near and distant future.  First, we had several wheat fields around the Delta that had some fall armyworms. In addition, we are seeing a fair number of fall armyworms in whorl stage corn.  I wouldn’t say the numbers we are seeing are anything of great concern, but the numbers are higher than we normally see this time of year. This tells us that fall armyworms are in the environment and capable of moving into rice.  As the wheat is drying down, make sure to keep a close eye on field edges, especially those fields adjacent to wheat.

Another point I wanted to make is in relation to rice stink bug.  We had higher than normal levels of rice stink bug in wheat this year and many fields were treated across the Delta. What does this mean for rice? It’s hard to tell at this point because a lot of things can change between now and when rice begins to head.  However, over the last couple of weeks, we have seen those populations moving into ryegrass, which is heading all over the Delta. The numbers we are collecting are about twice as high as they were last year at this time. Again, I don’t know what this means for rice, but the potential is definitely there to have another bad stink bug year in rice. We have a graduate student, Mr. George Awuni, that is working on rice stink bug.  He will continue to monitor populations on various hosts and we will keep everyone informed about what we are seeing in terms of rice stink bug populations in all of the grass hosts.