Staying or Breaking the Course of the Threshold Concept to Manage Cotton Fleahopper

Cotton fleahopper is a traditional cotton pest where it occurs in the southwest. It’s feeding on squares may affect lint yield and earliness. Classic thresholds  based on economic yield decline have been difficult to define or are much higher than typically utilized. This struggle may be due to sampler variability, cultivar variation in seasonal fruit loading, insect response to plant water stress, hot spot detection along field edges, and desire to promote earliness due to severe weather threats. Data presented will illustrate some of these issues. We suggest thresholds are higher than currently used, but lower than classically calculated due to these issues. How much lower is a management decision that is not readily incorporated into the economic threshold concept.