Stink bug populations

Insecticide use in Georgia cotton has declined dramatically since the late 1980s, with the successful elimination of the cotton boll weevil in the 1990s and the widespread deployment of Bt-transgenic cotton, beginning in 1996. However, in the 1990s stink bugs became increasingly serious pests of cotton and growers began to apply more insecticides to manage these pests. This increased insecticide use threatened to offset at least some of the benefits that have been derived from boll weevil eradication and the use of Bt-transgenic cotton. UGA entomologists continued stink bug surveys and studies in 2011 that had been initiated in 2007 to evaluate the complex of natural enemies that attacks stink bugs in Georgia. Their surveys concentrated on corn, peanuts, soybeans and cotton in Atkinson, Coffee, Colquitt and Mitchell counties. As they continue to gather data on stink bug population dynamics and natural enemy activity, it is becoming increasingly clear that some crops such as cotton and peanuts are poor reproductive hosts, relative to others such as soybeans. So biological control to limit population growth would be less effective in crops where stink bug reproduction is limited, and will need to focus instead on wild and cultivated host plants where reproduction is concentrated.