The boll weevil pheromone in a controlled release dispenser placed in a trap has a wide range of uses in cotton insect management programs. Two specific uses are detection and suppression of low level populations.

Experiments specifically designed to evaluate boll weevil traps for detection of low level reproducing populations were conducted in North and South Carolina in 1978 and 1979. The orogeny of a single reproducing female was simulated by placing 20 infested squares in small isolated fields. Traps placed in fields 210 feet apart detected F₁ progeny in all fields where trap placement began at the edge of the fields (1.9 per acre) and in 57% of the fields where trap placement began 210 feet from the edge of fields (1 per acre). F₁ progeny were detected in all fields that contained two or more traps per acre. The data obtained from these experiments proved to be particularly useful when used in conjunction with a computer simulation model to estimate a probability of 0.9983 that boll weevil reproduction did not occur in the boll weevil eradication trial evaluation zone in 1979. Additional detection experiments were conducted in 1982, 1983, and 1984 in North and South Carolina to compare the effectiveness of border and infield traps in detecting and/or predicting reproducing boll weevil populations. Four experiments were conducted in which the total projected spring captures of boll weevils averaged 0.32, 3.6, 0.05, and 0.13 weevils per trap.