I. SIVCEV; A. GALO
Institute for Plant Protection and Environment,  Banatska 33, 11080 Zemun, Yugoslavia

Majority of corn producers in Yugoslavia are “small farmers”. Many of them are growing the corn in long monoculture since their needs for corn are significant. In some villages in southern Banat even 80% of their agricultural land was under the corn. In general, we presume that more than 30% of the corn production is in repeated sowing (two and more years on the same field).

When population of WCR reached economic level, damages on corn root from larvae feeding occurred. Although farmers were informed about the presence of new corn pest and advised to rotate the crop or to apply soil insecticides, many of them continue growing the corn in monoculture without applying the insecticides.

After having serious damages in consecutive two or three years these farmers realized that in presence of economic population of WCR it is no longer possible to grow corn in monoculture and even in repeated sowing ( two years on the same field). In general, having low corn yield, it is expensive for these farmers to buy soil insecticide and applicator. Therefore majority of farmers started with crop rotation. As a result of crop rotation presence of corn on agricultural land felt down – below 50%.

From our point of view it was good to know that we learned farmers that crop rotation is vary effective but from the other side it was not productive since the surface under the corn was lowered.

We noticed that farmers are rotating the crop, as a general rule, without estimating real need for that. In many cases it is possible to repeat corn sowing on the same field. In order to educate farmers how to estimate necessity for crop rotation or soil insecticide application (risk assessment) we started program for farmers training. This program was sponsored by FAO LoA PR 19713 and  by Federal Ministry of Agriculture. The program is based on “The Whole–Plant Count Technique” and “The Pherocon AM Sticky Trap Technique”. By this program several farmers in two different regions were selected. About 500 ha, in both regions, were used in order to train the owners and to represent techniques for population estimation/risk assessment.

The program should continue in other regions in order to cover more farmers.