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Entomology Farm

Bugging Out on Science
Most farmers raise crops as food for animals, but for 19 years Paul Rebarchak cultivated corn, potatoes, tomatoes, and other crops as food for insects. Rebarchak, who recently left his position as entomology research farm manager to coordinate greenhouse operations and facilities in the agronomy department, oversaw field research for 12 to 15 projects a year on the entomology farm.

Entomologist Shelby Fleischer checks plants for signs of insect infestation. Fleischer has developed a Web-based insect tracking program that can forecast pest infestations for a variety of crops.

“Much of the research on the entomology farm centers on testing new management strategies and studying insect ecology in field conditions,” Rebarchak explains. “We aren’t out here raising bugs and releasing them into crops. If we want to study how an insect infests a crop, we do it under controlled conditions in a greenhouse.”

Because most crops on the entomology farm are either sprayed or insect-damaged, they aren’t sold. Rebarchak probably could have made a healthy profit on the acre of sweet corn that entomologist Shelby Fleischer asked him to grow last summer, but Fleischer, an insect population expert, needed that plot to help him track three notorious sweet corn pests. Traps are set at the Rock Springs site to capture corn earworms, European corn borers, and the fall armyworm, all of which grow into nondescript brown moths. Fleischer and his research team count how many adult pests are caught in the sweet corn field and enter those numbers into a Web database that collates and provides daily updates on pest information from 40 sites in Pennsylvania and almost 300 sites in four surrounding states.

Called “Shelby’s Sweet Corn Pest Alert Network,” (http://www.ento.psu.edu/vegetable/sweetcorn/default.html), the site gives producers a regional view of insect populations, which can help them make pesticide management decisions. “The network can give you advance warning of what pest is coming and whether your collection data is similar to neighboring farms,” Fleischer says. “You can access the information for that week or look at past maps to see how populations are moving.” Fleischer says the Web technology can easily be adapted to track pests that prey on other crops.