Heliothine Trap Counts, June 8, 2023

As has been done for many years, pheromone traps for bollworm and tobacco budworm have been placed in numerous fields around Mississippi to give people an overview of the overall moth pressure from these two major pests. The data are reported as average moth catch per trap per week. Each reported county has 3-4 traps monitored for each species. Individual trap catches can vary widely, so management decisions should never be made based on a single trap. For example, the 3 bollworm traps in Yazoo county this week had 506, 48 and 3 moths. This variability is more extreme than normal, but having 1 trap catching 5-10 times more than another is common.

As can be seen in the table, bollworm pressure this week was higher than normal in the Delta, and about average in northeastern Mississippi. Tobacco budworm trap counts are normally much smaller than bollworm since Bt crops have been released, and this trend continued this week.