Early Control of Alfalfa Weevil
Summary
A study was conducted at the Fruita Colorado Research Center by Charles Higgins to investigate the effect of earlier spraying to stop alfalfa weevil damage. May lst, Furadan application to alfalfa reduced the damage of weevil larva feeding more than the May 18th application. Most local growers wait until mid-May before treating alfalfa. The early May 1 application: had a 1.25 rating of damage to leaves on a 1-5 scale where the late May 18 application had a 2.00 rating and the check--no spray--had a severe 3.38 average damage rating. Furadan, being a systemic insecticide, has a two week effect on feeding weevil larva. The larva numbers were beginning to increase again by the June 3, 1976 harvest after the May 1 application but the leaves were Still in good shape. The early application averaged 375 larva per 10 sweeps of the net, the late application--141 larva, and the check-- 1,080 larva. The late application was still keeping the larva count low but there had been damage to the terminal leaves before the June 18 spraying. There was no difference in the yield of hay in tons per acre between the early and late treatment. Interestingly there was no difference between the sprayed plots and the check--unsprayed plots--in yield. This
Local Knowledge Graph (15 entities)
Concepts & Topics (6)
Related Works
Items connected by shared entities, co-authorship, citations, or semantic similarity.