Skip to main content
Entomology 2025 Main banner
Icon Legend
This session is not in your schedule.
This session is in your schedule. Click again to remove it.
 
Oral Presentation
Oral Presentation
Poster Display
Poster Display
Student Competition
Student Competition
Ticketed Event
Ticketed Event

Student 10-Minute Presentation Competition

Plant-Insect Ecosystems

Student Competition

Student

Grad 10-min Competition: P-IE, Field Crops 1

Perennial cover crops in cotton to manage thrips and enhance arthropod diversity

Monday, November 10, 2025
9:24 AM - 9:36 AM Pacific
Location: Oregon Convention Center, D139-140, OCC
Oral Presentation Student Competition
Perennial groundcover cover crops are being studied as an alternative to the use of herbicide in cotton. Since annual planting of cover crops can decrease thrips densities in cotton, the goal of this research was to examine how a perennial cover crop may reduce thrips and increase arthropod diversity in cotton. Field trials included combinations of white and red clover, annual ryegrass, and tall fescue, in addition to fallow control plots. Averaged across two years and compared to a mixture of clovers and annual ryegrass, fallow plots had in general more thrips than plots with cover crops. Arthropod predators and herbivores sampled with sweep nets were more abundant in plots with a clover cover crop compared to fallow and ryegrass cover crop plots. Perennial cover crops with clover have potential in reducing thrips in cotton while also promoting arthropod diversity.