By Brad Haire
University of Georgia
There’s a destructive gang running loose in Georgia. It wants
to do only two things and has taken an opportunity to
drastically increase its numbers in recent years. In its wake,
it threatens to suck some profit out of a major Georgia
commodity.
Individual members of the gang probably don’t know they’re in a
gang. But collectively they’ve gotten the attention of Georgia
cotton farmers, says Phillip Roberts, entomologist with the
University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental
Sciences.
They have complex scientific names. But on the street, or in the
field, gang members use aliases like stink bug, tarnished plant
bug and leaf-footed bug.
“And all they want to do is eat and reproduce,” Roberts said.
Gang leader
The gang’s ring leader is the stink bug. Common across Georgia
and around homes, the stink bug, along with other gang members,
really likes the taste of cotton bolls, the fruit-like part of
the plant that produces lint.
A hungry stink bug pierces a boll with its needle-like beak and
injects a digestive enzyme to soften the tissue inside. It then
sucks the tissue out for food.
“In addition to the outside boll damage, the hole it creates
allows organisms to enter the boll and cause rot,” he said. This
reduces the quality and yield of the cotton from that boll, if
it is able to produce cotton after the attack.
Georgia’s cotton plants begin to make these bolls around mid-
June. About 75 percent of the cotton now is setting bolls.
New problem
In the past, this gang wasn’t much of a concern to farmers or
entomologists. It was controlled when farmers sprayed pesticides
on their cotton to kill other bugs and worms. (Tobacco budworms
and corn earworms cause the most economic damage to cotton. Left
unchecked, they can eat a field down to nothing.)
In the 1980s and early-90s, Georgia farmers had to spray their
cotton for worms and bugs as much as 16 times throughout the six-
month growing season, Roberts said. And the chemical they
sprayed killed most all bugs, including all members of the boll-
eating gang.
Due to new technology, however, farmers don’t have to spray
pesticides nearly as much anymore.
In the mid-90s, farmers began planting a new kind of cotton,
developed to produce an insecticidal toxin created by a common
bacteria, Bacillus thuringiensis. When worms eat the leaves of
this Bt cotton, they die without causing any more damage to the
plant.
Most Georgia farmers now only spray about twice for bugs or
worms each growing season. This has saved farmers money and time
and has been better for the environment in and around cotton
fields, Roberts said.
But now that farmers spray less pesticide in their fields,
members of the boll-eating gang have moved in for an easy cotton
boll meal. And their numbers are on the rise.
The real damage from this gang will not be known until harvest
begins in September and October, Roberts said.
Farmers and cotton scouts should keep an eye out for boll damage
and the members of the boll-eating gang right now, Roberts says.
If too many gang members show up, farmers should spray before
they get out of hand and cause real damage to the crop.
