What are the methods for controlling underground pests in sweet corn?
How to control underground pests in sweet corn? Please advise. The underground pests damaging sweet corn mainly include mole crickets, white grubs, wireworms and cutworms. These pests damage sweet corn in their larval stage, mainly during the seedling stage of sweet corn, causing dead seedlings and missing plants. To ensure full and strong seedlings, integrated control should be carried out....
How to control underground pests in sweet corn? Please advise
The underground pests damaging sweet corn mainly include mole crickets, white grubs, wireworms and cutworms. These pests damage sweet corn in their larval stage, mainly during the seedling stage of sweet corn, causing dead seedlings and missing plants. To ensure full and strong seedlings, integrated control should be carried out.
1. Reasonable crop rotation
In areas where underground pests occur severely, paddy-upland rotation should be carried out to reduce the number of pest sources. Crops such as rice and wild rice stem can be chosen as the previous crop.
2. Flooding and deep ploughing
Before spring sowing, irrigate the farmland and combine with deep ploughing, and clear weeds at the field edges and corners to reduce the base number of pests and the breeding sites for eggs.
3. Light trapping and killing
Since adults have strong phototaxis, black light lamps and frequency-vibration insect-killing lamps are used at night during the adult occurrence period for trapping and killing. Each frequency-vibration insect-killing lamp controls an area of 2-2.67 hectares, and can effectively trap and kill adults such as mole crickets, white grubs and cutworms, reducing the number of eggs by about 70%.
4. Poison bait trapping and killing
After sweet corn transplanting, use 0.5 kg of trichlorfon + 0.5 kg of phoxim + a small amount of brown sugar + 20 kg of rice bran per mu to make poison bait placed around the borders to control cutworms and mole crickets.
5. Manual catching and killing
During the seedling stage of sweet corn, inspect the field in the morning and evening for the occurrence of cutworms. Generally, when cutworm damage is found, carry out manual catching in time to reduce pest damage.
3. Soil treatment
Use 1-1.5 kg of 5% dimehypo granules + 25 kg of fine soil, or 100 ml of 50% phoxim emulsion mixed with 15-25 kg of fine cinder, spread on the ground before ploughing and harrow into the soil, which can kill white grubs and wireworms.
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