Soybean Commodity Cooperative Agricultural Pest Survey: Vigilance Against Potentially Invasive Species

Abstract

The NYS IPM program has partnered with NYS Dept. of Agriculture and Markets and USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) for many years on various commodity surveys to monitor for potentially invasive species that would be of concern to NYS agriculture. Our 2019 soybean commodity survey was successful, and we were asked to continue. In 2020, six NYS IPM and CCE collaborators surveyed 25 soybean fields in 22 counties from May until October. No moths of the two potentially invasive species were caught, demonstrating that they still aren’t a present threat to NY farmers. The soybean cyst nematode was identified in soil samples collected from 17 fields in 14 counties. This means that the soybean cyst nematode is much more widespread in NYS than initially determined in 2019, and should now be considered a primary pest of concern for soybean growers. Outreach and education efforts are underway to inform farmers of this new threat, what the best management practices are, and why it’s important that they increase efforts for testing for this nematode, which is considered the number one pest of soybeans nationally and globally, causing >109 million bushels of yield loss in the US alone in 2017.