 Scouting for small grain insects in the wintertime is what I want to talk a little bit about. It's a couple of different insects that we are concerned about. We're concerned because of the aphids primarily because they are spreading a bad disease called Burley-Ellidwar virus. And we're also concerned about Hessian fly because it is a chronic pest and can be a problem. Now these insects, while they are different groups and belong to different taxonomic groups and are not closely related and damage the plants in different ways, they're very similar to the point that they have multiple generations per year. And the warmer it is the faster they grow. So in years with the warm winter, we could have extra generations of aphids. We could have an extra generation of the Hessian fly. So they're similar from the standpoint that they are active whenever the weather warms up enough. So later on this week we go, we're scheduled to be in the 70s, so we can easily have these insects developing there. I think they're in lower thresholds with probably around 50 degrees or something. So anytime the temperatures above that, they could be growing. So again here's a picture of Burley- Ellidwar virus. That's why we're very concerned about our aphids. We have a lot of information about managing Burley-Ellidwar virus. Austin and I and several others put together this publication. You can get this off the www.asis.edu and read more about Burley-Ellidwar virus. I'm not going to go into the details right now. I do want to point out that when we're out looking for aphids, aphids can look a little bit different sometimes because they do have wings on occasion. You can see all of these that have come in here have their wings on them, but they're also fully functioning adult aphids that don't have wings. And here are some pictures of some of those. So the bird cherry-oad aphid is the primary vector we believe for Burley-Ellidwar virus in our region and rice-root aphid can also bring in Burley-Ellidwar virus. Other aphids also can occur, but you're looking at these little little sacks of goo basically and you can tell they're aphids because they have these little most of them have these little tailpipes sticking out the back end relatively long antennae and so they're usually kind of like clustered in herds because the mother when she gives birth to her life young she may sort of stay in the same place with her babies so you often kind of see them if there's more than one aphid you may kind of see them in almost like a little herd of cows and they're sucking insects. Their aphids are sometimes hard to scout for because they hang out on the undersides of the leaves or they're feeding down at the bases of the stem in cold weather they move down to the base of the plant and they may be actually down below ground and when wheat is small it's a long way down to get to that wheat so it is sometimes hard to scout for because you've got to kind of crawl along and try to see the aphids. So therefore we basically try to predict the risk about having barely illidwar virus from the work that we've done in previous years because it's often you know not economical to scout the small grains as often as you would need to technically to try to figure out what was happening with the aphid populations. So we know that the earlier that wheat is infected the greater the yield loss we're going to have from barely illidwar and it's corresponding to say serial illidwar virus. So we're worried about this thing mainly through the end of February first part of March. Beyond that there's no point in putting out an insecticide and trying to control the aphids for to protect your yield from barely illidwar virus. Generally we're worried about controlling those aphids early. So historically we can make a few general recommendations but of course this year when we everybody planted late directed things sort of go out the window but generally our recommendations are if you're going to be planting small grains during the recommended planting date for grains a seed treatment or a foliar spray 30 days after planting is going to be what pays off more often than not in North Alabama. In South Alabama it's generally that late winter spray late January early February either with or without fertilizer seems to be when it's most likely to pay off and with all of our late planted wheat that's going to be the time to be applying the spray for growing the illidwar virus if you if you have the money to sort of put on the spray. Central Alabama is and when we're planting normally and late October early November it's got it could have time and be warm enough for the substantial development in the fall as well as in the winter so sometimes the optimum situation for Central Alabama may be to spray twice and we really may not be able to afford that but spring either either 30 days after planting or as the aphids are picking up and starting developing the in the late winter either one was better than not spraying at all but what too might be optimal. So again with this late planting that we're looking at this year where most everybody got there got their plants in late we'd say that probably the we would recommend putting on a spray in late January or early February. Barley illidwarf is one of our biggest would you say Austin sort of unrecognized disease problem that we have. Yeah the symptoms are not real clear cause that's the problem. Right. And we, you know, Odes and Barley it will jump out at you. Right. It's really hard to tell. So you could be having yield loss not knowing it and by the time you see the symptoms it's already spread so this is why it's a tough thing and so normally I don't tell people put on sprays just on a routine basis if anybody who knows me will know that but this is one of the exceptions that I think that everybody if you're going for high production we ought to be putting on one spray for a Barley illidwarf virus and that we sort of hedge our bets based on historical data when the best time to put that spray on is. Having said that if you can go out and look for wheat at in the wintertime you may find that you've got an unexpected number of aphids even though you did have already sprayed. Our thresholds are generally if you're out looking if before the weed has started to elongate if you've got six aphids or more per square foot per row foot or once the stem's starting elongating if you're finding two aphids for stem. Now if you're going to go out and scout for aphids you want to go out when the weather is nice and that's for several reasons. The insects tend to be hiding hunkered down when it's cold and you're going to be cranky or at least I am when I go out and try to look scout for aphids it's 40 degrees and I'm freezing to death. I'm not going to do a good job crawling on the ground counting those aphids and you aren't either. So what you really want to do is pick a nice day you know above 60 degrees the insects will have crawled up if they're going to bite the middle of the day and that would be the time if you're going to go out and look for aphids that would be the time to do it. Now we have a new kid on the block which is called syphomatis the common name we're hoping to be is going to be the hedgehog grain aphid because this little aphid has got little spines all over it. Here's mama here and these are all her babies you see these little herd of they kind of occur in herds. Generally the babies are kind of amber colored the mother is more blackish colored and if you look at them with a hand lens or a microscope you'll see that they are they do have these hairs all over them. This is a new aphid we know it's curing throughout central Alabama we don't know with what kind of role it's going to have in terms of making her early yellow dwarf problem worse so if anybody's out looking at their wheat and they happen to see the sapid please let me know or one of your extension agents let them know about the sapid. So the other thing I want to talk about is that now's a good time to go out and just look at your wheat and assess the general health of the wheat. You want to be out and looking to see and hopefully we're not going to have problems with Hessian fly. Hessian fly like aphids the earlier you plant the more likely you're going to have a problem with this multi-generational insect but it can occur on any different kind of planting date. What you want to be looking for is you just want to start looking for plants that just don't look right. So I want to point out that so it's sort of your normal wheat it looks like the here's one here's the sick plant right here. Can you see how this leaf the base of the the middle part of this leaf blade here on this plant is not even above the ground here so it looks like the leaf blade is sticking right out of the ground. That's just it's just not growing right when you go out and you look at a field that's infested with Hessian fly that's going to be probably be your first assessment is this field just doesn't look right. Here's some more here's a close up you can see how these leaf blades look like they're trying to come out of the ground to kind of bunch together and they're kind of a blue-green kind of dull greasy color here's a nice clean happy plant over here with the leaves coming out and we see the leaf sheath comes out here and then the leaf blade sticks out I think those are the terms. Here's another one can you see that wide blue leaf blade there kind of a thin stand again wide blue leaf blade coming right out of the ground that's assigned that that plant stunted and not growing right. Chances are the problem it's going to be Hessian fly although Leicester Ford star four can also have this look so this is what you want to have you want to have your you know your plants leaf sheaths coming out of the ground and kind of but here here the leaf blades are coming right there at ground level just doesn't look right here's another one here's another one here. Here's Rudy Yates out there in a field that was heavily infested with Hessian fly one of the problems that you can get when it attacks early is it can kill the plants outright especially it's a cold step they finish them off with their kind of lingering on and weakened for Hessian fly so this is a field that was badly damaged very thin stand. This is what the Hessian fly looks like if you start looking you're going to be pulling your leaf sheath away from the base of the plant and start looking for the larvae which are these little white things with a green line going through them or these are the pupil stage right here. Here's another example was kind of showing you here are the larvae here are the here are the pupae that where we pulled the leaf sheath away and there they were there was a bunch of them so how these got down here is that the adult Hessian fly lays her eggs on the leaf blade and then that little maggot hatches it hatches out and crawls slowly down and then down behind the leaf sheath and goes down as far as it can go so before joining your courage it's going to go right down to the base of the plant as far as it can go behind that leaf sheath once the plant starts to joint and this little maggot is crawling its way down and gets stuck at the joint so as later in the season the Hessian fly infestation and where you'd be looking for Hessian fly will change just because it that you know they the infestation proceeds further up the plant and as the plant grows so here it's just you know here's the point we just doesn't look right in the back here's a resistant variety here that's growing nicely and here's a variety here that's badly infested with Hessian fly and you can see that there are very few heads out there here's some real life examples out there and in some fields unfortunately we had a bad epidemic somewhere around 2009 2010 most of these pictures are from that time again this week just doesn't look right lots of dead tillers that's another sign later on the thin sparse stand and the dead tillers are signs of Hessian fly stunted plants we doesn't supposed to be this thin or this short it was just a bad Hessian fly year this is what the adult looks like it looks like a lot of other flies so if we have them in a pheromone trap that's with it was something attracting the adult flies and we have just a few flies on that trap we can kind of pick out what they look like little beaded antennae here and long legs like a mosquito one thing is that when they when they bleed they bleed red and I'm pointing this out because it was this is a sad little fly that was trying to get off this sticky trap and it tore its foot off and it bled this little red female it's blood but red that's just a sign I want everybody to try to remember their red color anyway those adults come out they lay the eggs on the leaves the eggs up hatch little baggots go down to the bottom of the plant the problem is is that when we're trying to control Hessian fly they are protected in the plant for most of their life so it's really hard to spray them with a foliar insecticide all we can do is try to get the adults when they're out flying around and laying eggs the eggs or the little maggots as they are hatching from the egg and crawling down the rest of that plate to go behind the leaf sheet so we have relatively right nearer window if we had tried to spray for Hessian fly rescue may be possible but we're best going to be controlling Hessian fly by decisions that are made before planting and I'm just going to go through these briefly it's a long list all of these are just designed to reduce your problems avoid continuous planting of wheat in the same field because the puppy over summer in the field so if you come right back in the next fall they're going to say thank you I'm here and ready and thank you for putting wheat back in my field so like the Hessian fly resistant variety control the volunteer wheat which can be allowing the flies to build up early in the fall like in September don't plant your wheat before the recommended planting date if you're going to use grazing try to plant rye oats or a Hessian fly resistant wheat because generally all these grazing things are planted early that can allow the Hessian flies to build up early and then fly into the great wheat produce for grain as an entomologist I love flowering to vary the wheat debris especially right after harvest lots of people can't do that but if you can that kind of varies those those puppy don't use the susceptible week for wildlife planning I think this is pretty huge because wildlife plantings are put in early and what can happen is that the you can build up your Hessian flies early that picture of Rudy Yates out there in that wheat field that wheat is out in an area where there's lots of little wildlife plots scattered around that build up the Hessian fly that's sort of a chronic hotspot if you're going to grow a susceptible week consider using a high rate of an insecticide seed treatment or spraying the foliar insecticide at the two leaf stage to try to control that early early infestation which is the most devastating those are some of the IBM recommendations we have but if you get to the point at this time of year you go out in your field and you say this week just doesn't look right well then start trying to think about how many of these stillers don't look right start pulling leaves back and looking for the flies and if you've got a thin stand or if you've got more than 20% of your tillers that are infested with the Hessian fly your yield potential is seriously compromised for that field because we're not only talking about what's already happened but the fact that there can be another generation of the Hessian fly coming along so that nitrogen application may not pay off so the decision might just be to think about just saying I'm not going to harvest this field so or I'm not going to put the nitrogen application on I'm going to save my inputs and just harvest it for hay or something so that's one thing to think about is is at this time of year is am I am I so badly invested that it's not worth going on now it may be possible and so we've had some luck here and this data from North Carolina years ago that you might be able to rescue a field if you go out at this time of year and you find you've got some maggots or you've got some few feet in the field and it's you know 5-10% or even 20 but you really think that this field's got potential in terms of being a good stand and you're willing to go out a couple times a week while during this stage right now or you know and keep an eye on the development of the Hessian flies so they don't always they're not always all in the same stage but they are sort of pretty much clustered so when you go out you're probably going to find there either like late-stage maggots or their pupae now you're going to want to spray the pyrethroid insecticide when these adults are starting to emerge how do you know when the adults are starting to emerge when they look like every other little fly out there in the field well what you can do is you can you can squeeze the pupae so you see these brown things here if you squeeze this and it's mostly white it means that it's close to being in the stage this larval stage this is the stage where it transformed from the larval to the adult but if you squeeze this pupae and it's pink you remember how I showed you that picture of that hessian fly adult on the trap with a little bleeding the little pink hema lymph when you're squeezing these pupae and they're starting to be pink that's a sign they're getting closer to the adult stage and they're more likely to be they're about to be coming out that's the time when the pupae are faked is kind of start looking for some eggs on the plant to what you maybe want to see a few of the eggs or what you just start seeing that these pupae are turning pink a little wait a few days and then that would be a good time to put on this rescue pyrethroid spray if you're going to try to do that in the field here's a picture of the eggs they're kind of hard to see they kind of glisten they're about 130 second of an inch long takes about three to five days for them to hatch so you see if you start seeing them seeing some eggs there on the field on the leaves I think if you spray that residue of the insecticide is going to be on there and as season larvae you're making their way down they're going to be impacted by that so that's if you're going to try to do a rescue spray for your hessian fly so there's a lot of information about this if you go to www.asis.edu or you go to alabama crops.com just search on hessian fly and what you're going to be looking for we have a fact sheet on the hessian fly and we also have a time the information sheet on how to scout for the hessian fly in the winter time there will be some more information for you so here's a fact sheet that I was talking about that you can find and anybody have any questions one of the things you mentioned egg food plots and wheat would be better if we encourage people to grow oats or would maybe probably be a better choice rather as an early I think so yes rather plain wheat yeah I think so as far as as fashion fly especially in these areas or spots where there just seems to be a chronic hotspot for it would that might make burley elendor for us that's the only problem but they're sort of a host for all the small grains are a host for burley elendor yeah so I think it may not matter they got a plan earlier yeah I don't like seed wheat planted early for yeah particularly for hessian fly they go out with a I would think a susceptible variety and have a large buildup yeah on September planted wheat and then as you said before then you have wheat fields in the general vicinity you're just flooding that will fly that even if they're resistant you're you're pushing yeah you're putting pressure on that resistance that's right so it's all a numbers game with hessian fly it's just that you know how much pressure are we going to have and one thing that Brenda Ortiz found out working with some historical data from David Button was that there are certain years that are going to be more conducive to having problems with hessian fly so the La Nina phase of El Nino where we're going to get that warmer drier winter it's going to be favorable and also what was very critical is if there's some rain going on in the in the early fall and from anywhere from late August to early October there's rain during that time and the biological reason for that is because if you get rain at that time it's a signal for those hessian flies that were over summering in that pupil stage for those adults to emerge and come out and start the generation so those are sort of two times we know so if you're thinking if you want to know when the greatest risk is going to be it's going to be in those La Nina years when we have a little bit of rain this year we had didn't have rain during that period so that's one thing that sort of led to a probably a lower infestation and the lower risk for hessian fly this year even though we're technically I think we're in the La Nina phase so it's going to be sort of warmer and drier you wouldn't know it from how much rain we've had in the last week or so