BUREAU OF ENTOMOLOGY AND PLANT QUARANTINE 33 
Better Sweet Corn Due to Research 
New sweet corn hybrids resist corn earworm attack 
New sweet corn hybrids coming on the market in the last 3 or 4 
years have about half as much earworm injury as did Golden Cross 
Bantam or loana when work began to test the resistance of sweet 
corn to the corn earworm. Use of these hybrids has resulted in a 
reduction of 40 to 50 percent in the amount of loss to sweet corn from 
this pest during the last few years. The Evergreen hybrid 471-U6 x 
81-1 was released by the Purdue Agricultural Experiment Station in 
1952 and the still more resistant Evergreen hybrid Illinois 14n x 81-1 
will probably be ready for release in a year or two. This breeding 
work was done in cooperation with plant breeders in the Bureau of 
Plant Industry, Soils, and Agricultural Engineering and the States 
of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Mississippi, Ohio, South Carolina, and 
Texas. 
Several insecticides satisfactory for corn earworm control 
More than 300 tests were carried out in four States to develop better 
insecticidal control methods for the earworm in market and canning 
sweet corn and in seed corn. DDT and heptachlor gave consistently 
good results. TDE, Dilan, Prolan, Bulan, endrin, and toxaphene 
were outstanding in one or more tests, indicating that they too may be 
satisfactory provided better formulations or methods of using them 
are devised. Analyses show that where corn was sprayed with DDT 
emulsions, the residue of DDT on kernels at harvest was negligible. 
Wheats and Barleys Resistant to Hessian Fly 
Ponca, a new wheat variety released by the Kansas and Oklahoma 
Agricultural Experiment Stations in 1951, possesses the highest level 
of hessian fly resistance now available in a commercial variety of hard 
red winter wheat. It is also highly resistant to leaf rust. Three 
promising new fly- and leaf-rust-resistant strains of soft wheat were 
tested in field plots in Indiana. They are superior in yield to the best 
of the present commercial varieties, and the release of at least one of 
them is anticipated by the fall of 1954. 
Testing of 200 barley varieties for their resistance to hessian fly 
showed that 8 of them could be tentatively rated as resistant. The 
outlook for producing fly-resistant barleys is very good, as the re- 
sistance is controlled by one or two genes in the parents. 
These tests were made in cooperation with the Bureau of Plant 
Industry, Soils, and Agricultural Engineering and the States of 
Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, and Pennsylvania. 
Progress in Wheat Stem Sawfly Investigations 
According to a survey in 1951 the wheat stem sawfly infested wheat 
in all of Montana east of the Rocky Mountains, all of North Dakota, 
most of northwest South Dakota, and much of northeastern Wyoming. 
The heaviest concentrations were in northern Montana east of the 
Rocky Mountains, and in northwestern North Dakota. The sawfly is 
present in native grasses in southern South Dakota but does not mi- 
grate to wheat fields. Apparently, wheat in this area ripens too early 
for the sawfly larvae to mature and overwinter successfully. Wheat 
