Field Test of a Pathogenic Virus Against Scb, 1994

Season long control of the SCB was evaluated in a RCB design (5 replications) of plant cane at the St Gabriel Research Station, St Gabriel, LA. Two biological treatments were compared to that of an insecticide treatment and an untreated control. All treatments were applied over the sugarcane canopy with a CO2 backpack sprayer on 20 Jul, 10 Aug, and 1 Sept when the SCB infestation exceeded the economic threshold (5% of the stalks containing live larvae in the leafsheaths). Four 0.004 flat fan spray tips per 6 ft width of row at 32 psi applied 20.1 gpa of finished formulation. Prior to the initiation of the experiment, 2 applications of Lorsban 15G were made (15 lb/acre each) to suppress red imported fire ant predation on SCB larvae (10 May and 9 Jun). The two Crop Genetics International treatments were applied with Plyac at a rate of 6 oz/100 gallons and powdered skim milk at 0.5% wt:vol. SCB damage was assessed by counting the bored internodes, exit holes, and total number of internodes from 100 randomly selected stalks of sugarcane (20 stalks/replication) in each treatment (18 Oct). Analysis of variance was conducted and separation of means was by LSD.