This is the Sugar Beet Report, bringing you the latest information from NDSU throughout the Sugar Beet Growing Season. Sugar beet planting is wrapping up, and producers are preparing for early season insects. Mark Botel, NDSU Extension Entomologist, has the latest concerning these early season pests. Mark, now that most of the beets are planted, what are some of the things producers should be watching for on insects?

Seedling emergence and development rates should be watched closely at this time. Just look for any, uneven emergence or failure to emerge or wilting and dying plants. That can sometimes be characteristic of springtail, wireworm, a white grub, cutworm problems, those kind of things. So and we have had some early reports of wireworm problems, very scattered at this point and actually widely scattered from southern Minnesota all the way up to Walsh County near Grafton.

What are the best control options for these pests?

With the early season stand loss, usually the best thing is going to be replanting. So, as quickly as possible to get back in there. And then if you have the option to put an insecticide on at planting to prevent another loss. The key to managing insects like cutworms is catching them early. You may be able to do a rescue and not have to replant, but actually use a foliar insecticide. So I would advise on that to use a sprayable liquid, something like, either a chlorpyrifos product or a, pyrethroid insecticide should do a good job on them.

Well, Mark, we have to talk about our old pal, the root maggot. What do you expect the root maggot impact might be this year?

You know, we can tell a lot about what's gonna happen this year by looking back at what happened the last couple of years. It'll tell us where some of those hot spots might be expected. In 2023, the populations had dipped a little bit valley wide that is compared to 2022, but we're still at very high levels and we expect similar things to happen this year. Some of the worst areas last year were in the Central and Northern Valley like they are just about every year, but we also had the Baker Sabin area where we had very high populations last year. So the high potential for damaging infestations this year are gonna be essentially the highest probability would be in locations where you had problems last year. We're gonna be doing the, root maggot fly monitoring network again this year. We hope to get that up and running. Actually, my crew is putting stakes in fields as we speak. In the next 5 to 7 days, most of those stakes should be out. We'll announce when we're actually gonna start counting. Just as a reminder, we do the counts every Monday, Wednesday Friday. And on those same 3 days per week, we do post them in near real time for the growers and for other Ag professionals. And they're very easy to find. They're very searchable and findable online.

I know it's super early, Mark, but can you give us a rough idea when peak fly might occur?

Sure. This year appears to be running, tracking very similar to last year. Peak fly occurs at about 650 degree day units, that's root maggot degree day units. Right now, we're between 250 to 275 depending on latitude within the valley. So given the 10 day extended weather forecast, it suggests that peaks may happen somewhere around, a week or so ahead of the historical average. Is again, very similar to last year. If you want a real long, put yourself out on a limb and saw yourself off forecast, I would put a set somewhere between June 4 June 10th or so. So we'll know a whole lot more in the next week after these, rainy systems kinda go through, and we see what we get for degree day accumulations. It's certainly very likely that we'll be in that 1 week ahead of, normal or average.

Thanks, Mark. Our guest has been Mark Botel, NDSU Extension Entomologist. This has been the Sugar Beet Report, bringing you the latest information from NDSU throughout the Sugar Beet Growing Season.