As farmers progress with soybean harvest we encourage you to take a quick look at your grain quality, especially at field edges.  We have been receiving reports of the deformed and discolored beans typical of stink bug damage.  If your beans show signs of stink bug damage (or even if they don’t!) consider incorporating stink bug scouting into your managem

Mexican Bean Beetle adult (left) and larva (right).  Photo by R. Hammond.

We have been hearing reports of Japanese beetles in corn and soybean.  These beetles are large with a shiny copper and green color.  Foliage feeding in corn is almost never economic, though economic damage from silk clipping is possible (though rare).  Consider a rescue treatment when  silks are clipped to less than ½ inch and, fewer than 50% of the plants have been pollinated, and the beetles are still numerous and feeding in the field. 

Over the course of the next year, you will hear much about the pest, soybean cyst nematode.  No stranger to Ohio, since the 1980’s, farmers in Ohio have been monitoring this pest.  The first surveys, early 1990’s, SCN occurred sporadically in the state but some populations were very high.  In a survey of fields in southern Ohio, high populations of SCN were found in fields where yields were consistently low.  One of the more recent check-off funded projects, identified that more fields than 20 years ago has SCN.  Among the 143 fields sampled at a depth of 6 to 8 inches in 51 counties in Ohi