It's Not Too Early to Be Thinking About Sticky Cotton

Useful links:

• Common Natural Enemies: Your Allies in IPM of Cotton
• Common Whiteflies in SJV Cotton
• Aphids Common to Alfalfa and Cotton
• Sampling Whiteflies in 7 Minutes or Less
• UC IPM Pest Management Guidelines for Aphid in Cotton
• UC IPM Pest Management Guidelines for Whitefly in Cotton

Sticky cotton is a condition the San Joaquin Valley cotton growers have been able to avoid in most years, due to no small contribution of natural enemies which prey and parasitize these pests.

However, whiteflies and aphids are always present and can cause major problems if not watched carefully.

There are a number of aphids and whiteflies that could be found in cotton and our IPM focus has been on proper identification of sweetpotato whitefly (or silverleaf)and cotton (or melon) aphid.

Dr. Peter Ellsworth, IPM Specialist with University of Arizona Cooperative Extension and his colleagues have produce a great one page factsheet reminding us of the sampling procedure for whiteflies in cotton.  This procedure is a binomial process which removes the requirement to count every insect on the sample leaf. It requires the 5^th leaf from the top to be selected and the entire sampling activity can be conducted in 7 Steps in 7 Minutes. Click here to read the leaflet.

The AZ approach has been adopted by UC Pest Management Guidelines for Cotton and the 5^th leaf is the same sample unit for cotton aphids. While aphid honeydew has a different

constituency than whitefly, both can damage lint quality and cause major harvest, ginning and spinning problems. Details of aphid and whitefly sampling can be found in the Cotton Pest Management Guidelines.