Using pheromones to control the population of cotton bollworm on soybeans in the central zone of the Krasnodar territory

The purpose of this study was to assess the possibility of using methods of elimination (mass trapping) and disorientation of the cotton bollworm, H. armigera to limit its abundance on soybeans. The experiments were carried out in 2020–2021 in the Central Zone of the Krasnodar Territory in the stationary scientific crop rotation of the Federal Scientific Center for the Biological Plant Protection, Krasnodar (at an area of 2.4 ha) and the Zolotaya Niva experimental site at Stanitsa Voronezhskaya, Ust-Labinsky district (at an area of 10 ha). The biological effectiveness of the elimination and disorientation methods was determined by the degree of damage to plants and soybeans. The disorientation effect was calculated by the number of males captured at the disorientation sites, in comparison with the control sites. The decrease in the search activity of male cotton bollworms (disorientation effect) reached 85.3%, the damage to soybean seeds by the pest in this variant was 2.0% compared to 10.8% in the control one, and in the elimination variant, it equaled 1.5 - 3.0% and 7.5%, respectively, raising possibility of including these techniques for biorational control system against H. armigera.