What Are Grubs

Pest Reaches Louisiana Rice Paddy, Heading Toward Sugar

Although they can do serious damage in rice fields, crawling in and out of the narrow stalks leaves the caterpillars vulnerable to pesticides, while fat sugar canes give them permanent shelter, LSU Agricultural Center entomologist Gene Reagan said.

Louisiana grows about 40 percent of the nation's sugar, with another 45 percent or more grown in Florida. It's the nation's third-biggest rice-growing state, behind Arkansas and California.

The one Louisiana rice paddy where Mexican rice borers have been found so far was near Vinton, though they probably are in others, AgCenter rice expert Johnny Saichuk said Tuesday.

"It causes what farmers call a whitehead. ... Grains are blanked out because there's no nutrients being carried up" the injured stem, he said.

He said the Vinton-area farmer had planted his other rice fields with insecticide-treated seeds, and they were fine. The infested field is one where he raises crawfish after harvesting rice, Saichuk said. To keep from poisoning his crawfish, he used untreated seed.

As the moth's range expands, it will become a problem for more farmers who rotate rice and crawfish, Saichuk said -- though even before its arrival, "the marriage between rice and crawfish production turned out not to be as good as people first envisioned."

The grubs, which hatch into brown moths about a half-inch to three-quarters of an inch long, eat a wide variety of grains and grasses.

U.S. entomologists found them in Arizona in 1917 and in California in the 1920s. But the threat to Louisiana's sugar became apparent in the 1980s, when they reached some experimental sugarcane fields in Texas, Reagan said.

Reagan went to some of those farms. At that time, farmers still set fire to their fields just before harvest to burn the leaves from the stalks.

"There were more than a few fields that the farmers could not harvest at all. There was nothing to carry to the mill. They'd try to burn the trash and the field would just completely burn up," he said.

Reagan said it will probably take them another year or so to reach commercial sugarcane fields in Louisiana.

He and Texas A&M entomologist M.O. "Mo" Way have been studying ways to control the bug in sugarcane since the 1980s. Their list is topped by irrigation. Though the moths lay eggs on some green foliage in rice, "on sugarcane we've never found them on anything but brown and dying foliage," Reagan said.

Common Questions About Lawn Grubs | b-beez.com

This article contains several questions and answers about lawn grub control . First of all, what our lawn grubs? Lawn grubs look a lot like small, fat worms. Even though they are not very long, they can do a lot of damage to your lawn and they can destroy a healthy lawn in a matter of a few months. For this reason it is very important to know as soon as possible that they are in your lawn, and if they are, it is a good idea treat them right away. The most common types of white grubs are the larva of beetles and Crane flies. These insects will lay their eggs in your lawn in the early spring. After they hatch, they will start to eat up all your grassroots and also the new shoots on your grass. Since they are nocturnal, you may not find too many of them active in your lawn. You may not even see them. But you know that they are there if they continually do damage to your lawn and the damage only gets worse and worse throughout the summer. The best time for lawn grub control is in the early summer.

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