Corn Earworms – Vegetable Crops Hotline

Corn Earworms

Populations of earworms, as evidenced by pheromone trap catches, have not gone to zero as the often due in July. Catches have been fairly low, but moths are still flying and presumably laying eggs. The good news is that in most areas, dent corn is silking, which attracts most of the moths away from our fields of sweet corn and other vegetables. For sweet corn, we would expect pheromone trap catches of less than 10 per night to be safe from damaging infestations of earworm. This is often a good time for growers to avoid the time and expense of spraying their sweet corn. Other vegetable crops such as tomatoes and peppers are less attractive to the moths for egg laying than sweet corn, so they are unlikely to suffer damage when the neighboring field corn has fresh silks present.

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