Spider Mites: A Season Long Concern
May 20, 2009 To control spider mites in cotton, you have to hit them hard and hit them early, say growers in one of the most affected areas of the country.
“Our scouts are out there almost every day just as soon as the cotton comes up. If you don’t get on spider mites early, you can lose an entire field,” says Patrick Turnage, who farms 2,000 acres of cotton in the Missouri Bootheel near Hayti. Also involved are his father (Sonny) an uncle (Duke) and friend (Trey Mitchel).
“You come out here in July and you can see without a doubt who treated for mites and who didn’t. It’s unbelievable,” says Turnage,
“In western Tennessee, spider mites are an increasing problem, but it’s nothing like in the Bootheel,” says Tim Roberts, a crop consultant with TennArk Crop Service in Dyersburg, TN. “Every cotton grower we have in the Bootheel will have to treat all his border areas, and many will have to treat their entire fields.”
Roberts scouts cotton in both western Tennessee and the Bootheel, including Turnage’s 2,000 acres. He says the keys to controlling spider mites are to scout for them as soon as the cotton emerges. And if you see them, treat immediately with a true miticide at the full label rate, if possible.
With less severe infestations, growers might be able to band the miticide or treat just the field borders. However, it’s better to be safe than sorry, says Roberts, because spider mites can get out of hand quickly.
One thing that’s helped, says Roberts, is the registration of Portal, a true miticide from Nichino America.
“In the past,” says Roberts, “we’ve used anything and everything. We would go at the lowest rate, and maybe try to band the product. But Portal works just as well and is priced lower, so we can go at the full label rate over the entire field and still be ahead.”
Turnage agrees: “Portal is at a price point where we could use a sufficient rate to get control,” he says. “We farmed 2,000 acres of cotton last year and there wasn’t a field that we didn’t apply Portal – at least on the borders. On about a third of our acres, we did a full broadcast of Portal. We sprayed everything – even the ditches and the electrical poles – because mites can host on just about anything.”
Turnage’s verdict? “Once we used Portal, there was no going back to the others.”
Turnage is one of the few cotton growers who will be raising as much cotton in 2009 as he had in the past.
“Cotton has been very good to us,” he says. “It’s paid the bills since we got back into it in 1989 and I’m not going to let the current low prices keep me from planting it again. I know that budgets are tight but with products like Portal, we can pencil out a profit at the loan price. So, yes, we’ll be planting cotton in ’09.”
Spider mites are expensive to treat for, and up until a few years ago, weren’t a consistent problem for most cotton growers east of the Mississippi. In the hot, dry climates of Texas, Arizona, and California, growers have always treated for spider mites. But for many years, spider mites east of the Mississippi were considered a late-season or cutout type of pest, says Angus Catchot, Extension entomologist at Mississippi State University.
No more. “Now we’re seeing spider mites as early as one leaf in some areas. Essentially, they have become a season-long problem for us,” Catchot explains. He says cotton acres treated for spider mites in Mississippi alone went from 100,000 in 2003 to 415,000 in 2007. “We have had to treat 25% to 30% of the cotton acres in Mississippi over the last several years, and we’re hearing similar reports from the states around us.”
Adds Anthony Pavloff, a crop consultant in Tensas Parish, LA: “It’s gotten pretty rough on us the past two or three years. These days, treating for spider mites is a no-brainer.”
Pavloff also used Portal in 2008 “and we were very impressed with it. It gave us an excellent residual and did an excellent job.
“I probably pulled the trigger a little sooner in ’08 than I might have in the past, but I wanted to keep the infestation to a low roar.”
Catchot agrees, saying, “I think we are underestimating the amount of damage that mites are causing us. When mites reach threshold levels, we need to be treating. And I would caution growers about flaring mites by using broad-spectrum insecticides. You make a problem much worse quickly if mites are in the field. I realize that sometimes other pests are at threshold and need to be treated, but growers should be aware of the problem and be ready to take action on mites when they need to.”
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