Sorghum field maturity ranges from pre-boot to post bloom milk stage. Much of the area has blooming sorghum fields.

While the field blooms scout for midge every morning between 8:30 and noon.  After noon, the adult midge have completed their life cycle and die.  Use the table below to determine your economic threshold for managing midge.

We began to find rice stink bugs in sorghum fields this week from Refugio to Victoria. Rice stink bugs can be very damaging to sorghum at bloom and their damage lessens at the crop matures.

Scouting: Grain-head-feeding bugs tend to congregate on grain sorghum heads and are often clumped in distribution, most often along the field margins. The beat-bucket technique is the most efficient way to sample for grain-feeding bugs. You can watch a brief video demonstrating how to scout with a bucket HERE

Threshold: For purposes of sampling and computing, thresholds for stink bugs and leaf-footed bugs can be  combined into a single count. The economic thresholds are dependent upon the stage of grain development. The thresholds at flowering (Table 16), milk (Table 17), and soft-dough (Table 18) stages are based on all grain-feeding stink bugs and leaf-footed bugs combined, and it is based on crop yield potential, crop market value, and control cost.

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