Factors contributing to the economic impact of cotton fleahoppers, Pseudatomoscelis seriatus

View the project final report

• 2012 annual report

Commodities

• Agronomic: cotton

Practices

• Crop Production: application rate management, tissue analysis
• Pest Management: economic threshold, field monitoring/scouting, integrated pest management
• Production Systems: agroecosystems

Introduction

Several agricultural trials have documented the propensity for cotton to overcompensate for fleahopper herbivory (Sansone 2009, Chen et al. 2007 Parker and Buehring 2006, Ring et all 1994). The strongest evidence of overcompensation, however, comes from a field cage study (Ring et al. 1993). Here, we invested how the timing of herbivory influences cotton's overcompensatory response. In a 2011 open-plot field study we found evidence for overcompensation following fleahopper herbivory in the second week of squaring. In this study we used large field cages to replicate the experiment.

Our objective was to investigate how the timing of cotton fleahopper herbivory during cotton squaring influences cotton's overcompensatory response.