b'then its a good time to revisit your management practices. For example, plant an area with corn that doesnt have Bt traits for rootworm if you dont have a history of the pest in your area. And there are those areas in Indiana, particularly in the southern part of the state.One management strategy that can be effective for manage-ment is an integrated pest management (IPM) strategyusing only what you need, when you need to use it. If you use Bt corn plus a high rate of a neonicotinoid seed treatment, you arent really using an IPM strategy, because you are targeting the same pest (corn rootworm) with two differ-ent approaches, meaning one is redundant, Krupke says. Well, you could change the I to insurance and have Insurance Pest Management. You are banking on all of the worst case scenarios being present in the field that year. The other reason to hold off on using Bt traits all the time is to delay resistance as long as possible. One way to look at resistance to Bt traits, is that you have a definite number of years you can get out of a traitand the number depends on the trait, the pest, and the pressure level. But it is not infinite, so growers are best served by using itTroy Bauer serves as field technical representative for BASF.only when needed, rather than across the board and including at low, sub-economic population levels.If you decide that a seed treatment is the route to take instead, Bauer says that the Poncho 1250 Votivo seed treatment is a good way to protect young plants from pests during the critical early development stages. The insecticide component of Poncho 1250 Votivo provides good control of critical early-season insects, such as corn root-worms and wireworms, which are commonly found in corn, he says. Votivo is a new biological componenta unique bacteria strain that lives and grows with young rootsto prevent nema-todes from reaching the plant and causing damage.Krupke believes it all starts with revisiting what youve done in the past and changing it. Farmers dont always do the same thing on the farm, he says. We know that 2020 is going to be different than 2019.As for starting in IPM, Krupke says theres plenty of things you can do. If your rootworm populations are low, you dont have to manage them, he says. For example, on our research plots, we dont get economic heavy pressure of corn rootworm. We want to develop good populations so we can learn things, but we have a hard time generating the numbers. The background popula-tions, statewide, are just very low.If youre working in an environment similar to this, Krupke says its the perfect time to experiment. Dont use Bt corn in some plots, leave a check stripjust experiment, he says. The most information youll get is if youChristian Krupke serves as professor of entomology at Purdue dig up some of those roots mid-July and look for some injuries toUniversity. the root. In terms of monitoring, Krupke says theres not much to doKrupke recommends having some flexibility with planting this before 2020 except start forming plan for where to plant Bt andyear. non-Bt hybrids.Make seed orders that include flexibility, he says. With flex-The eggs in the field are always there, he says. The mostibility, you can learn more! If you learn that pressures are low in powerful solution is still rotation. Its a great way to reduce theyour field, then you can learn where pests are and where they pressure from corn rootworm, because any eggs that hatch theare notand make pest management decisions that are better next year into a crop other than corn, will die. suited to your operation in the future.SW106/ SEEDWORLD.COMDECEMBER 2019'