Hi, I am Taynara, a Ph.D. student at the Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology. And I am a student at [Professor and Extension Specialist Dominic Reisig’s] lab and I work with stink bugs to understand the monitoring tools such as pyramid traps or pheromone traps to monitor them on soybeans. 


So stink bugs, if you're not familiar with them, they are considered a pest of many fruits, veggies and row crops such as soybeans. And they estimate around $300 million in soybean costs and losses annually. Usually, they will show up after the flowering stage and they will feed on seeds and pods of soybeans. And it will not look any good, as you can see here. So, to manage stink bugs, we need to go out in the field and to scout using a beat cloth or a sweep net.


And if it [reaches] risk of economic loss, likely we will control them by spraying insecticide. However, monitoring tools such as pyramid traps could support our current scouting techniques. That's why I had 68 fields in North Carolina and I placed two different pheromone lures in those fields that are commercially available — a single lure and a dual lure. And I had seven different commercially available pheromone traps that I tested in those fields. And I also scouted the middle of the fields using a sweep net. 


And then those are the four [..stink bug species that I found in soybeans: the brown, brown marmorated, green and southern green stink bugs. And I did all that because I had two goals: to determine which trap captured the most stink bugs throughout the season and also to determine which soybean growth stage stink bug population reached risk of economic loss. 


And now let's go to my findings. So I found that the pyramid trap, also known as the black pyramid and the yellow pyramid, capture most stink bugs throughout the season. And when we checked the pheromone lure, the dual lure captured most stink bugs throughout the season. It attracted most species that I mentioned. And if we check the average number of stink bugs throughout the season, I found that there are more stink bugs that reached risk of economic loss from our four to our six soybean stage — full pod to full seed — when we have pods and seeds for them to feed on and cause damage. As nearly also one third of my fields were above risk of economic loss, out of my 68 fields. It's a lot. 


And then for conclusion, I would recommend growers to use those pyramid traps with a dual lure. And we know that stink bugs numbers are higher from full pod to full seed, which means we should be considering scouting or putting those pyramid traps out there early in the season, maybe before flowering. Which is in here. 


And for implication, time-efficient sampling, as we can combine those pyramid traps with sweep net scouting. And also trying this in other crop systems because stink bugs damage not just soybeans, but fruits, veggies and other crops.