Educational materials should be readily available to the grower, e.g. , at workshops, on the Internet, at seed dealerships etc. Grower education should be customized for regional practices. Just as was noted in the first panel, many areas did not need Bt corn because economic thresholds for European corn borer were historically met very infrequently. Efforts should be made to determine when Bt corn is actually needed. All panelists agreed that annual monitoring and remedial action plans were important.
Registrants have existing annual monitoring programs and remedial action plans in place.
A centralized insect resistance monitoring program was noted as the best approach. Monitoring should focus in high risk areas. The cost-effectiveness of several monitoring techniques, including the discriminating dose and F 2 screen, were analyzed. The use of Bt sweet corn as a sentinel trap crop was also discussed. In addition, if resistance was detected on a local or regional level, it might be possible to plant strips of sorghum or sweet corn throughout the field to attract susceptible moths in which to mate with resistant moths.