A. PAJMON
Agricultural Institute of Slovenia, Department for Plants Protection, Hacquetova 17,
1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia

In Slovenia, a major part of the farming land is sown with corn. Western corn rootworm (Diabrotica virgifera virgifera) population is quickly approaching our border. For this reason, monitoring is more frequently applied in Slovenia. In 2001, baits have been controlled and replaced at control points more often. Furthermore, the number of control points has also been increased to 56 which is more than in previous years. In the vicinity of Italian border we set 10 control points, around the international airport of Ljubljana (Brnik) were another 8 of them. Along the borders with Croatia and Hungary, which is in the eastern Slovenia where the corn production is the most intensive, 38 control points were set. At each point, a pheromone bait and yellow sticky plate were set. The monitoring was done from the end of June to mid-September while the pheromone baits and yellow sticky plates were regularly controlled and replaced with new ones. Despite the fact that western corn rootworm was found in Croatia in 2000 only 27 km away from the Slovenian border, it has not yet been detected in Slovenia. Therefore, there is a strong possibility that western corn rootworm will be found in Slovenia next year.