a. Do Not Treat (6 or fewer plants are infested). Resample the field in a week to 10 days.

b. Continue sampling! Examine 5 more plants.

c. Continue sampling! 7 of the 11 plants have 40 or more aphids.

d. Trick question – using the 250 threshold, we recommend examining 25-30 plants per field, so technically you’d still be counting! However, if we stopped sampling with only these 11 plants, the average is 56 aphids per plant – not at threshold, per perhaps heading that way. I’d recommend taking more plants (our Speed Scouting decision from question c), or resampling the field in 2-3 days.

e. Do Not Treat, but resample in 7-10 days. Your total number of infested plants is 7 + 4 + 2 = 13, which indicates do not treat at this time.

f. Treat within 7 days. Your total number of infested plants is 10 + 4 + 4 +4 + 5 = 27, which indicates the need to treat.

g. The aphid population may be close to the threshold – not very low or very high to make an easy, quick decision. As the true aphid population approaches 250 per plant, it simply takes more + / - samples to distinguish between fields below, at, or above threshold.