 Hello, my name is Jan Knodl. I'm an Extension Entomologist for North Dakota State University. This video describes scouting for the red sunflower seed weevil, which is an economically important insect pastive sunflower in North Dakota. Red sunflower seed weevil is about an eighth of an inch long and reddish brown in color. The larvae consume about a third of the kernel. This reduces the seed weight and oil content of the sunflower. For scouting, you want to start when the sunflower is in the R4 stage, when you can see the yellow ray petals on the face. And you want to continue until you make a spray decision, or the sunflower becomes R5.7. The .7 refers to 70% of the area on the face of the sunflower as having florets on. For scouting, you want to check at least four locations in the field. You want to use an X pattern. Avoid sampling the edges of the field. Walk in about 75 feet and then randomly select five heads. And you can use mosquito repellent to spray the head. This will force the weevils to move up from the back. You can see there's one right there on the face of the head. It takes a couple minutes for the weevils to move up. There's another one that's moved out. Then use the table to estimate the total number of weevils per plant. You can also rub the face of the sunflower head if you don't have any deet, or mosquito repellent, and this will cause the weevils to move up from their hiding spots. The economic threshold for the red sunflower seed weevil is different in oil seed sunflowers than confection sunflowers. To decide whether to use insecticide to control the red sunflower seed weevil, it's necessary to determine the economic threshold for this year. The economic threshold is based on the cost of insecticide per acre, the market price of sunflower in dollars per pound, and the plant population per acre. The economic threshold can be calculated using this formula. Using the cost of insecticide between eight and ten dollars per acre, the economic threshold is near four to six weevils per head this year. The optimal time for insecticide treatment is when the sunflowers reach the R5.1 stage, like this one here when you have the florets on the outer edge of the face, and you also want about 30% of the plants in the field at this stage. For the confection or hauling sunflower market, the economic threshold is only one to two weevils per head. This is due to the confection sunflower industry standards for low damage of only 0.5% seed damage. We recommend sunflowers grown for these markets be treated a minimum of two times, once at the early flowering, R5.1, and again five to seven days later. With this type of program, you'll have a window of protection against several damaging seed insect pests, like the banded sunflower moth, ligus bug, in addition to the red sunflower seed weevil. Growers should plan treatment schedules early because competition for aerial applicators increase when flowers begin blooming across the region. Insecticides registered for the red sunflower seed weevil are listed in the NDSU extension. North Dakota Field Crop Insect Management Guide. You can also see the NDSU extension fact sheet on the red sunflower seed weevil for more information. Thanks for joining me and learning how to scout for the red sunflower seed weevil. Using economic thresholds and scouting protocols are important principles of integrated pest management.