Other hosts include cotton, tomato, crucifers, pea, tobacco, and cocklebur. Damage - In the Southeast, soybeans are attacked by both cabbage loopers and soybean loopers, but over 90 percent of these are usually soybean loopers. Although loopers infrequently cause pod damage, they are capable of inflicting heavy foliage losses. Defoliation by these pests leaves the plants with a ragged appearance. In North Carolina, damage usually results after a prebloom insecticide application removes most of the looper's natural enemies.
Soybean loopers are difficult to control with insecticides.
In North Carolina, soybean loopers have three or four generations a year. They overwinter as pupae within loosely spun cocoons which are usually attached to plant debris. Soon after adults emerge in the spring, each mated female begins laying an average of 640 eggs, singly, on the upper surface of the host plant leaf. The larvae, which emerge approximately 3 days later, pass through six instars in 2 or 3 weeks. The caterpillars then enter a pupal stage which lasts 1 week during the summer.