By Adam Varenhorst
As the season continues, so is our soybean gall midge scouting efforts. For much of South Dakota, the soybean that are infested with soybean gall midge are asymptomatic. That is, they show limited signs of infestation, but we can still find the larvae of the soybean gall midge in the stems. While this is good news, it is bad news that the soybean gall midge is still infesting soybean. We believe that these asymptomatic plants may be the result of many soybean fields being planted later than normal across the state. However, we will continue evaluating additional counties to determine the extent of soybean gall midge infestations for 2019. Since 2018, a total of 88 counties from five states have been confirmed as having soybean infested with soybean gall midge (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Soybean gall midge infested counties.