About Us

Our regional team with IPM, entomology, agricultural chemistry, geospatial analysis, ecoinformatics, economics, evaluation, and extension expertise is partnering with producers, crop consultants, industry, and extension personnel to develop corn earworm management solutions and deliver user-friendly resources. In combination, we deliver research-based vegetable IPM information directly to thousands of stakeholders annually and will compile sweet corn IPM and corn earworm management resources on this website.

Partners

Director

Kelly Hamby – University of Maryland

Expertise: Integrated pest management research and extension, including monitoring and understanding corn earworm resistance to Bt insecticidal proteins

Project role: Project director with specific focus on revising CEW thresholds in sweet corn and development of extension outputs

Website: www.hambylab.com

Bioassay
Bioassay determining corn earworm's resistance levels by measuring their ability to grow on diet containing Bt leaf tissue

Co-Directors

Michael Crossley – University of Delaware

Expertise: Ecoinformatics and genomics, including monitoring insect dispersal across landscapes

Project role: Co-project director with specific focus on characterizing changes in CEW population patterns in response to climate and insecticides

Website: sites.udel.edu/agriculturalentomology

Galen Dively – University of Maryland

Expertise: Agricultural integrated pest management, resistance monitoring, and ecological assessment of the nontarget effects of Bt crops.

Project role: Co-project director with specific focus on a multistate sweet corn sentinel monitoring network for tracking field-evolved resistance to the Bt toxins.

University of Delaware team in a cornfield
University of Delaware team, including Extension Entomology Specialist, David Owens, rating the sweet corn sentinel plot in Newark, DE

Principal Investigators

Christophe Duplais – Cornell University

Expertise: Insect chemistry, agricultural chemistry, insect monitoring

Project role: Lead and coordinator of chemical analyses related to longevity of pheromone lures, and isotope analyses to determine AI overwintering site. Provide chemical information on adjuvants.

Experimental setup
Experimental setup for quantifying the pheromone released by the dispenser after aging lures in the field

Deborah Grantham – Cornell University/Northeastern IPM Center

Expertise: The Northeastern IPM Center assists and participates in education, training, technical assistance, communications campaigns, partnership building, and evaluation including with respect to project impacts and adoption of IPM throughout the Northeast and across the country.

Project role: The Northeastern IPM Center will provide communication, social network enhancement, stakeholder engagement, evaluation of IPM adoption, and hosting of e-lists for collaborators and stakeholders. We will construct a project website, host and maintain the site, and track analytics on the use of the site. We will help measure changes in knowledge, attitudes, skills/actions, aspirations, and conditions described via methods that may include grower interviews, stakeholder surveys, cost-benefit analyses, webinar polling, and pre- and post-meeting evaluations, and write impact statements.

Website: www.northeastipm.org

Northeastern IPM Center project highlights and networking map
Northeastern IPM Center project highlights and networking map

Anders Huseth – North Carolina State University

Expertise: Insect ecology, resistance management, and insect monitoring

Project role: Coordination of corn earworm monitoring efforts in the southern sweet corn production region. Collaborator on projects testing earworm thresholds and control efficiency in Bt and non-Bt sweet corn.

Cone seeder
Cone seeder

Thomas Kuhar – Virginia Tech

Expertise: Applied insect ecology, integrated pest management, extension entomology.

Project role: Co-lead and coordinator for research aimed at improving sustainable integrated pest management programs for CEW including minimizing impact on non-target organisms. Virginia collaborator on projects that identify the best trap and pheromone lure combination for trapping CEW moths; evaluating dynamic action thresholds for timing insecticides to control CEW, determining the most IPM ad pollinator-compatible insecticide program for CEW control in Bt and non-Bt sweet corn, and monitoring CEW populations for resistance to Bt sweet corn.

Corn earworm
Corn earworm

James MacDonald – University of Maryland

Expertise: Economist who works on farm structure, contracting and agricultural marketing, commodity costs and returns, and competition and pricing in food and agricultural markets.

Project role: Estimate current on-farm costs of CEW control, and evaluate the financial impact of alternatives on costs and returns for different types of producers.

 

Brian Nault – Cornell University

Expertise: Applied insect ecology, pest management, extension entomology

Project role: Lead and coordinator for identifying the best trap and pheromone lure combination for trapping corn earworm moths. Collaborator on projects that evaluate dynamic action thresholds for timing insecticides to control CEW, determine the best bee-friendly insecticide program for CEW control in Bt and non-Bt sweet corn, and monitor CEW populations for resistance to Bt sweet corn.

Scentry Heliothis traps
Scentry Heliothis traps baited with pheromone lures for trapping male corn earworm moths

Colby Silvert – University of Maryland

Expertise: Nonformal education, program planning and evaluation, innovation adoption in specialty agri-food systems, trained as a social scientist and a horticulturist

Project role: Oversee project evaluation of outcomes influencing stakeholders and Extension educators and conduct social science research to identify barriers and facilitators to the adoption of improved sweet corn IPM and corn earworm management

Website: agnr.umd.edu/about/directory/colby-silvert

Co-Principal Investigators

Jared Dyer – Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County

Expertise: Extension entomology, integrated pest management, biological control

Project role: Co-principal investigator in monitoring resistance to plant incorporated Bt toxins, refining decision support systems for sweet corn IPM programs, and delivering extension programs to local grower audiences.

Daniel Gilrein – Extension Entomologist, Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County

Expertise: Agricultural pest management, entomology extension, arthropod and plant problem diagnostics.

Project role: Regional collaborator investigating optimized corn earworm trapping, corn earworm overwintering survival, monitoring resistance to foliar-incorporated toxins, and contributing local-reared corn earworm specimens for migration studies.

Website: ccesuffolk.org/agriculture/entomology

Chris Jones – North Carolina State University

Expertise: Geospatial data analysis, spatially and temporally dynamic spread modeling, pest and disease modeling

Project role: Forecasting CEW population dynamics across the East Coast of the United States from current data. Forecasting future CEW dynamics due to climate change and other drivers.

Joseph LaForest – University of Georgia

Expertise: Technology, data management, and data visualization

Project role: Investigator focusing on improving ease of field data collection and using that information to inform grower decisions.

Website: agpestmonitor.org

Ross Meentemeyer – North Carolina State University

Expertise: Geospatial analytics, participatory modeling, landscape ecology

Project role: Participatory modeling of CEW population dynamics with stakeholders. Forecasting future CEW dynamics and exploring scenarios.

David Owens – University of Delaware

Expertise: Agricultural pest management, extension

Project role: Pyrethroid resistance monitoring and coordination. Collaborator on projects testing earworm thresholds, lures, and control efficacy and monitoring corn earworm in Delaware.

Collaborators

Heather Grab – Penn State

Expertise: Spatial data analysis with a focus on understanding large scale drivers of beneficial and pest arthropod abundance in specialty crops.

Project role: Provide current data on CEW population from the Pennsylvania monitoring network and support experimental project efforts with replications in Pennsylvania as needed.

Website: ento.psu.edu/directory/hlc30

Kristian Holmstrom – Rutgers University

Expertise: IPM research and extension, with focus on the production of near real-time geospatial CEW moth population maps.

Project role: Unfunded collaborator contributing regular current and archival CEW population information as well as monitoring for Bt resistance.

Geospatial representations from the New Jersey statewide CEW pheromone trap network
Geospatial representations from the New Jersey statewide CEW pheromone trap network

Kemper Sutton – Virginia Tech

Expertise: Applied integrated pest management, insect ecology, extension specialist

Project role: Lead and coordinator for applied integrated pest management research such as insecticide bioassay and field trial evaluations, CEW trap type and lure evaluations, and Bt and non-Bt sweet corn resistance monitoring.

Veronica Yurchak – University of Maryland Extension

Expertise: Vegetable integrated pest management and sustainable production

Project role: Leads multistate sweet corn sentinel monitoring network for tracking field-evolved resistance to the Bt toxins

Typical ear damage of untreated Providence (non-Bt) and BC0805 (Bt). Maryland 2016.
Typical ear damage of untreated Providence (non-Bt) and BC0805 (Bt). Maryland 2016.