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Preventive control

Natural enemies

Parasitoids

Native parasitic wasps
Trichopoda pennipes is a Tachinid fly species that is as big as the housefly. The adult fly is brightly colored with a gold and black thorax and an orange abdomen. It has a fringe of feather-like black hairs on the outer side of the hind legs. The fly develops in the nymph and adult stink bug or squash bug. The female tachinid fly lays its eggs on the body of the bug, completes its cycle inside the bug's body, and the bug dies upon the fly's emergence (Mahr, 1999).

Predators

  1. Dragonfly
  2. Praying mantis
  3. Spider
  4. Weaver ant

Monitoring

To determine when control is necessary, shake the bugs out of the plant into a bucket of soapy water. Count the number of stink bugs.

The economic threshold on soybean is 1 stink bug/row foot during the pod-fill stage.

For vegetables and soybeans, the suggested economic threshold for the red-banded stink bug is 24 insects/100 sweeps and 36 insects/100 sweeps for the brown stink bug (Gray, 2010).

Cultural and management practices

  1. Remove and control weeds from fields and also in the adjacent fields. Weeds serve as the pests' alternate hosts.
  2. Plant small flowering plants to attract native parasitic wasps and flies.
  3. Plow-under all plant debris after the harvest to destroy all possible breeding sites.
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