Thirty years of Helicoverpa research in inland Australia: Part 2- The Millennium Drought

IN the first of these articles, published in the previous issue, I described the habitats and native host plants for Helicoverpa spp., especially 'H.punctigera', in inland Australia. Our knowledge of the ecology of these pests in the inland has come from a series of projects, funded by CRDC. GRDC and other agencies, over 30 years. But it has not been a continuous study. From 1987 to 2000, we made 51 field trips to the inland, and from 2009 to 2017 we made another 39 such trips. So what happened between 2001 and 2008? We never went to the inland, in part due to lack of funding, but also because it was extremely dry for most of this time.