By Clint Thompson
By Clint Thompson
The Georgia Cotton Commission and Phillip Roberts, University of Georgia Cooperative Extension cotton entomologist, advise cotton growers that whitefly infestations are building earlier than normal on the state’s cotton crop this summer.
“We’re seeing them on cotton now; not overly high numbers, but higher than normal populations of whiteflies on cotton. Being that we’re in mid-July, the presence of whiteflies in a cotton field really needs to influence every decision a grower makes,” Roberts said. “And what I mean by that, because when you have whiteflies, we need to do everything we can to conserve beneficial insects. Let’s try to avoid treatments which are very harsh on beneficial insects. And these beneficial insects matter. They help us. They slow the whiteflies down. And we just need to be on alert and be prepared and ready to deal with whiteflies.”
Roberts highlighted what it means for cotton producers to observe whiteflies earlier than expected.
“It indicates that our risk of them being a problem is higher. Now, the populations of whiteflies and infestations in the field, they’re very weather dependent. Hot, dry conditions, which we’ve been experiencing recently, are very favorable for whiteflies to increase populations,” Roberts said. “Rainfall events, especially over a couple of days, help us a lot with whiteflies. So, what we can control is conserving beneficial insects. We can’t control, whether it rains or not, but hot dry weather favors whiteflies.”
Whitefly infestations are significant because of their potential impact throughout the year. They typically migrate from winter vegetables to spring vegetables to agronomic crops, like cotton, to fall vegetables and back to winter vegetables. The buildup of whiteflies is concerning since their feeding injuries in vegetables can lead to virus transmission, including cucurbit leaf crumple virus, cucurbit yellow stunting disorder virus, cucurbit chlorotic yellow virus, squash vein yellowing virus and tomato yellow leaf curl virus.