Across the corn belt depending on time of year | Biocontrol nematodes naturally occur in most agricultural soils around the world. In the corn belt, approximately 20% of the fields will have a low level of biocontrol nematodes. For some reason, these native populations never become numerous enough to help us with rootworm control. Sometimes it is the wrong species or for some unknown reason the numbers never increase to a useful level. Often the native population is the same mix of species used by Persistent Biocontrol.
The Persistent Biocontrol application rate to establish biocontrol nematodes in the field is ~ 1000 / sq ft. This pushes the soil population into a level where biocontrol nematodes provide useful rootworm control and that level is maintained for multiple growing seasons. Original agricultural fields inoculated in NY have maintained useful biocontrol nematodes levels for more than 30 years including across crop rotations. The harshest corn environment we are working in is SE New Mexico around Roswell. Soil temperatures under irrigated corn is easily 10 degrees warmer that corn in the corn belt. Biocontrol nematodes were applied in June 2019 on a corn continuous corn field suffering from trait failure. That single application has provided rootworm control with a failing trait every year including 2024 and when we soil sample the field, biocontrol nematodes remain in the expected levels to provide suppression of rootworm.
Bottom line is Persistent Biocontrol is not introducing anything alien to corn fields, just providing a native biological control at sufficient levels to become established and provide economically acceptable rootworm suppression |
Biocontrol nematodes - Rootworm - Persistent Biocontrol
