LARGE-SCALE FIELD EVALUATION OF ELECTRIC INSECT 
TRAPS TO REDUCE BOLLWORM POPULATIONS IN 
REEVES COUNTY, TEXASL/ 
By Alton N. Sparks2,3/ 
Reeves County is located in the arid southwestern part of 
Texas. Before the late 1940's and the early 1950's, most of 
the farming consisted of growing alfalfa for hay and seed. 
After World War II, Reeves County was in a land boom, and large 
areas of desert were grubbed, deeply plowed, and leveled. 
Irrigation wells were drilled, and the county became a major 
cotton producing area. 
In 1965 about 58,000 acres of cotton were allotted to the 
growers in the county, but a Federal domestic acreage program 
limited the area planted to an estimated 46,000 acres. In this 
area, about 16,000 acres were involved in an insect control 
program in which traps equipped with blacklight lamps were used 
to control lepidopterous species, mainly the bollworm, Heliothis 
zea (Boddie), and the tobacco budworm, Heliothis virescens CE 
Light trapping had been used on a much smaller scale in 
1964 when, according to a distributor of insect traps, about 
4,000 acres of cotton were surrounded by light traps. In 1965 
1/ The research was in cooperation with the Texas Agri- 
cultural Experiment Station, Texas A & M University. 
2/ Entomologist, Entomology Research Division. 
3/ The author wishes to acknowledge E. L. Thaxton, Jr., 
agronomist, Trans-Pecos Experiment Station, and his associates 
for help in conducting the experiment, and the cooperation of 
all farmers in the area for making their fields available for 
the study. 
