Soybean podworms threaten yields

Wayne Bailey/University of Missouri Plant Sciences

With insects, you are what you eat.

That's no more apparent than with soybean podworm, a.k.a. corn earworm. Farmers battle the pest in July and August when it chews away at the tips of corn ears, but in late August and early September it moves to a more green, lush meal of soybeans.

This crawling menace can eat away all the profit in a soybean field. It loves to chew holes in soybean pods, eating the bean then clipping the pod off the plant. In the worst cases, a field can lose 100 percent of its yield.

MU Extension Entomologist Wayne Bailey encourages farmers to scout their fields now to stop soybean podworms from devastating your field.

Print story by Roger Meissen. Listen to a related audio story by Debbie Johnson.