Historical European Corn Borer Data Available on the Web

Kevin Steffey, Extension Specialist, Urbana, 217, 333-6652, ksteffey@uiuc.edu

We sincerely hope you find the historical information about European corn borer densities in Illinois useful. We suspect that the data can be used in many ways, including determination of economic impact of corn borers and planning for use of Bt corn for management of European corn borers. Please feel free to use the data in any manner you deem appropriate. If you develop slides or handout sheets from the Web site, please attribute the source of the information--University of Illinois, Extension Entomology, Department of Crop Sciences and Illinois Natural History Survey. Getting the data from fall surveys of second-generation European corn borers in Illinois from 1943 through 2001 on to a website was a massive undertaking. The people involved in this process are too numerous to mention. All of this was made possible by a grant (Illinois IPM On-Line) from the Illinois Council on Food and Agricultural Research (C-FAR).

For an overview and an explanation for the fall surveys of second-generation European corn borers in Illinois, go to http://www.ipm.uiuc.edu/fieldcrops/insects/european_corn_borer/fall_survey.html. From this site, you can link to farm.edu (http://space1.itcs.uiuc.edu/website/farmedu, also developed with funding from a C-FAR grant), which includes the European corn borer database from 1943 through 2002. When you get to the Web site, click on "European Corn Borer, 1943-2002" in the left panel. When the new Web page loads, you should see an outline map of Illinois that includes all counties and crop reporting districts (as created by the Illinois Agricultural Statistics Service). At the site you will be able to view data collected from individual counties, for crop reporting districts, or for the state. For individual counties or specific crop reporting districts, you can select the county or district of interest from the menus provided, or you can click on the county or district in the outline map. If you do the latter, the county or district of interest will be indicated in yellow. You also can view data for all years or for selected years (e.g., 1950-1975, 1990-2000). In the lower portion of the panel, you can access specific information for a given year for either individual counties (default) or crop reporting districts. The information is presented in both graph and colored map formats. For a brief explanation about how to use and navigate the Web pages, click on "Help" in the upper right of the panel titled "European Corn Borers."