Professor & Chairperson Michigan State University East Lansing, Michigan, United States
Chloridea virescens, the tobacco budworm remains a key pest in US tobacco production and the target of roughly half of the foliar insecticide applications in this crop. Registration changes and purchaser concerns about pesticide residues have limited the acceptable insecticides for tobacco budworm control and have resulted in an overreliance on spinosad. Recent interest in organic tobacco production has also highlighted the lack of effective OMRI listed materials for budworm control.Therefore, new tools are needed in order to maintain resistance management programs in conventional tobacco and to enhance organic control options. Nucleopolyhedrovirus (NPV) containing products have been adopted to control heliothine caterpillars in other cropping systems but have been less widely used in tobacco in the US and elsewhere. We conducted a series of laboratory bioassays to determine mortality, time to feeding cessation, and leaf consumption of second, third, fourth, and fifth instar tobacco budworm larvae exposed to tobacco leaves treated with a commercial NPV product, Heligen, as compared to an untreated leaves and Heligen treated soybean leaves. The results of this project will allow us to improve rate and application timing recommendations for Heligen in tobacco under field conditions.
