CL – Kudzu bug also soybean threat

Kudzu bug also soybean threat

He’s pretty sure the intruder caught a ride on I-20 to Vicksburg, traveling east from roundabout Atlanta.

“This thing hitchhiked,” said Angus Catchot, an Extension Service entomologist with Mississippi State University. “It occurs in really high numbers and gets in vehicles. We thought it would get here this way.”

And although the kudzu bug was just spotted July 13 in a big patch off Halls Ferry Road, near the I-20 exit ramp, the pest might have come to town a year or more ago. The same is true for kudzu bugs sighted July 16 in Montgomery County near Winona.

It’s small – no bigger than the eraser head on a No. 2 pencil – but it can chew through kudzu about as fast as it can multiply.

Clarion Ledger
7/25/12