Tag Archives: headworm

Mid-Coast Grain Sorghum Update

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Grain sorghum maturity ranges from boot to soft dough.  Some fields are turning color. We are finding varying populations of Sorghum Midge in fields ranging from 0-5 per head.  Treatment thresholds are 0.5-1 midge per head depending on the number of flowering heads per acre. We are finding headworms in Refugio County sorghum fields ranging from 0-4 per head.  Many of these are fall armyworms.  The economic threshold for headworms ranges from 0.15 to 1 large worm (> 0.5 inch) per head.  For medium worms (0.25-0.5 inch) the ET… Read More →

Mid-Coast Grain Sorghum Insect Management

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Fields of grain sorghum in Calhoun, Refugio and Victoria Counties range from 6-7 leaf to mid-late bloom.  The most important insects we are seeing are sorghum midge and aphids. Sorghum midge are only pests of grain sorghum during bloom.  The adult sorghum midge is a 1.3-mm-long, fragile-looking, orange-red fly, with a yellow head, brown antennae and legs, and gray membranous wings. (Source) During the single day of adult life, each female lays about 50 yellowish-white eggs between the glumes of flowering spikelets of sorghum.  Larvae complete development in… Read More →

Economic Thresholds of Pests in Sorghum Heads

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Maturity of sorghum fields varies widely across the Texas Coast.  While some fields have had harvest aids applied and are being harvested this week, other fields are just beginning to head.  Sorghum maturity is complicated even more in some fields which have parts of the field blooming while other areas of the field are at hard dough. Varying maturity within a field makes for tough decisions on what to protect from insect pests.  Will the young heads be mature when the more mature heads are ready for harvest? … Read More →

Scouting Sorghum with Mixed Maturity

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In the grain sorghum fields of the Mid-Coast, we continue to find sorghum midge, stink bugs, headworms and both sugarcane and yellow sugarcane aphids.  10-20% of the fields have one or more insects at or above economic levels. Many grain sorghum fields in the Mid-Coast have plants with maturity that can range from boot to soft dough.  In some fields these different maturities are in different parts of the fields while other fields have these plants all with in 20 feet of each other.  Many of these fields… Read More →

Crop Scouting Field Meeting – June 15

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Time: Monday, June 15, 9:00 a.m. Location: Calhoun County, Cotton field at corner of FM 1679 and Sanders Rd. Topics: Scouting Cotton and Sorghum CEU: 1 hour IPM