Lessons from the past ignored again and again: the western corn rootworm and our legacy of management miscues

Ever since the 1940s when the western corn rootworm began to spread across the Great Plains of the United States and into eastern regions of the Corn Belt, a series of management blunders have occurred again and again. Over the past several decades, resistance to several classes of insecticides, crop rotation, and now to the Cry3Bb1 protein has occurred. Why do these management mistakes continue to take place? Is there a chance that we can avoid these types of mistakes in the future? An overall historical perspective will be presented with a few predictions offered for the future.