 My name is Neil Kelley. I'm a regional extension agent in southeast Alabama. I'm going to give a quick update on Kaipika Curlio here in the wiregrass region You know southern peas is a very common crop for our growers in the southeast part of the state You know peas have many different pasts. We have things like aphids and thrips your common leaf-footed bugs stink bugs various caterpillar species But the one past that really causes us the most trouble is the Kaipika Curlio Most all these other pasts we inadvertently control Simply trying to control the Kaipika Curlio You know one of the problems that we have with that insect is that the curculio has Become resistant to all of our pyrethroids. So pretty much all the products that we have in our arsenal To help combat insect issues in southern peas This insect has the has become resistant to those chemistries Just a little background on them. You know primarily we see it in the southeastern US We see it in southeast Alabama. We see it in southwest Georgia It's starting to come a little bit of issue in southwest Alabama The mouth parts of this insect is at the tip of a curved snout. So that mouth part actually acts as a Feeding mouth part as well as in the females. It's ovipositor. So that's also the way that they lay their eggs Egg laying is very heavy in July when your cow peas Are available Female can have a hundred plus eggs inside of one pod The larva goes through four different in-star changes and matures around 10 days Which it chews out of the pea as a small white grub falls to the ground where it pupates over the next 10 days or so So we're looking at a 30 to 40 day per generation The adults will will over winter in the soil or native vegetation Typically emerge in April or May of the following year This is just a small picture showing the different life cycle stage as you can see as the grubs mature they fall from the pod Where they pupate in the ground they emerge as the small weevil Like you say somewhere between 30 and 40 days for all this to occur They begin feeding they'll feed on the peas and begin to lay eggs as well Talk a little bit about the population dynamics of the cowpea curleo And and this is a slide that was taken from dr. David Riley over at UGA in which they've done Several years of research with this insect as well mapping out the the population And if you will notice And there in 2012 We saw a small population around April 10th You look on out to about July 10th August 10th. We see a huge spike in the population and then the subsequent generation in September and October The 2013 data you see the same kind of spikes in populations They're just a month or two later. So, you know, sometimes the weather Will cause these generations to appear a little early or a little later or the availability of food Will cause different spikes different times of the year, but you can see how you typically will see two generations a year You know, so how do they cause injury primarily on feeding the males because there are male and female weevils The males cause the feeding damage They'll feed on the leaves blossoms The pods themselves the part that becomes a real issue in southern peas like when we shell out the peas and we found The bug stings on the pea and we find a little white larva It's from where those females are laying those eggs at the feeding site and it causes that shallow little cavity It would typically callus over the little grub will develop inside and then chew its way down into the pea pod itself Where it spends all four of its life cycles in star stages Before it chews its way out of the pod You know, this causes a irreversible damage To our crop, you know, we've seen upwards of 60 70% loss in many crops I have many growers who simply at a certain point in the year. They just disc up the field Abandon it and move on to a different planning Here's a picture of what the damage actually looks like you can see the bottom right corner The little larva as it chews its way out of the pod So we've had a couple little IPM research plots going here in headland the last several years These are replicated field plots. We have been testing various Chemicals pyrethroids some labeled some not labeled Just trying to find something that would work and then the mindset was if we can find a product that will control them Then we'll go about trying to get a label to make it legal to use these products. So Played with several several different mixtures tank mixes of chemicals. We've tried Biologicals as well as your synthetic pyrethroids. We've tried soil soil treatments as well as foliar treatments This gets into some of our data slides Talking a little bit all this is percent seed damage from Cucurleo. It goes back to 2015 Which if you'll notice was kind of a wet year This was one of our first treatments and you know the chemicals that we used and All the different rotations is not terribly important The biggest thing to look at is you look down there at the bottom, you know four days after treatment three on July 20th We were still seeing with all of our all of our different controls We were still seeing upwards of 18 percent damage You bump on down to July 30th You see that damage starting to increase as we move further into this season and we're up as high as 27 28 percent damage carry that on out another month to August 6th You can see as much as up to 90 91 percent Damage this moves on to 2016 Which 2016 happened to be a little bit of a drought year again? We changed up treatments the treatments here and are really not that important again Just looking at some of the numbers it kind of paints a picture for you Seven days after Treatment to August the 15th, you know, we're still seeing as much as 76 percent on our untreated But you know fifty four point eight fifty two fifty four point two percent in our treated plots So we're seeing a difference You know it is helping But in the world of research if you look at that though still are not significant differences So that's kind of important to notice here. You know, we do see some differences here But none of them were proven to be significant So what we started doing is we started rating them Compared to the control like how much better than the control was this treatment how much better Then the control was was this treatment Because we just were not getting any statistical scientific a significant differences between our treatments So bump over to seven days after treatment for that put us around August 29th You can see we're still getting sixty sixty two percent damage out of some of them this bumps to 2017 2017 was kind of a wet year for us and Again, if you look at all the different values, you see that there's still no significant difference there And we're still ranging upwards of 40 to 50 55 56 percent damage 57 in one instance So still what I consider unacceptable levels of control 2018 Was typically a wet year and the reason I'm telling you this wet dry wet dry And the reason we were kind of keeping up with that is because it doesn't really seem to have a difference in their activity They move when it's wet they move when it's dry We're still seeing Unacceptable levels of damage in all different weather situations weather scenarios Seven days after treatment for in 2018 that put us at August 27th You can see 70 80 percent late season. That's that second generation spike in numbers So you can see those kind of late late season peas Really really get hit hard 2019 Again, if you'll notice the seven days after treatment to August 5th graph We were seeing damage, but it but it wasn't wasn't terrible But when you come in there toward the end of the August after that first life cycle that first generation that second generation hits We essentially get very little control of those second generations. So, you know, where does that put us? I guess this thing is start with what we do know They're highly mobile insects. They can infest new fields the very first year They do have Really small wings. They typically stay folded up. They don't fly a lot, but they do have the ability to fly One thing that's very interesting about this insect and it also makes them hard to control They will play dead as they see someone walking through the field or they see a tractor coming through the field spray And they will freeze kind of ball up like a little roly-poly. They'll fall to the ground And then they're actually kind of protected by the canopy of the peas So sometimes I think just getting good coverage on these insects becomes an issue for us You know, the second generations of curculeos seem to always overwhelm the crop We can kind of control the first generation a little bit the second generation Will just about completely destroy the crop We're recommending to start insecticide treatments earlier than normal A lot of our people would typically start spraying peas at the site of first bloom. I Think that's waiting too long. We really need to start treatment two to three weeks ahead of flowering They are there. They are feeding They just don't start laying eggs until those Pods are present. So start spraying earlier than normal You're going to have to kind of evaluate on your own Circumstances evaluate the different varieties of peas you plant see if one might have a tendency to be a little more tolerant than others You're going to have to continually rotate Crops to try to prevent that pest build up We recommend as soon as you get through picking a variety that you go in there and that you diss that crop up Try to eliminate as much of a food source as you can We've been using what they call the PBO aid is a Cenergist product so we're recommending that you mix some type of synergist product with your pyrethroids You're going to have to do tank mixes You know a lot of these chemicals they have Maximum amounts that can be applied Throughout the year. So you need to look at that figure how many sprayings you're going to have and you're going to have to buy several different products To rotate When you spray, you know, we're still looking into alternative insecticide something that you can apply to the soil To try help give a little bit of control there and you're going to have to spray them frequently You're probably going to be at a three to five day interval As long as the label will permit that and that's one reason you're going to have several different products Because we're going to be spraying these things weekly Kind of looking head where are we going to go from here? We're going to continue some evaluation of alternative insecticides and different soil treatments See if there's any way that we can can disrupt that life cycle as they pupate in the soil To help control that second generation to help control that population boom if you will We're going to play a little bit with different types of trap crops and different types of pest exclusion systems Of course, these are both both small and large scale Pest exclusion systems just to see if that might be a feasible alternative Some different references here We've got a couple of publications out capicicurio management in Alabama You can see one there from Georgia as well. Dr. David Riley those guys over at UGA Tifton They've done a lot of work with the capicicurio and they have some really good resources that are out So I recommend you taking a look at those as well We do have some different YouTube videos that are available on our beginning farm project channel Here's just a few more different commercial horticulture resources available in Alabama. We have our IPM newsletter We have our phone app that we've been working to develop and we continue to update And also we have the southeastern US vegetable crop handbook the 2020 copies are out now If anyone is looking for one of those get with your local extension agents