A workshop convened by the Cooperative Research Centre for Tropical Pest Management at Narrabri on 7-8 December 1992 examined the feasibility, benefits, and funding implications of providing an operational forecasting service for heliothis. The workshop participants represented grower organisations, insecticide suppliers, pest-control services, and rural-industry research funding bodies, along with state-government, CSIRO, and university scientists. 2. The workshop focussed especially on the question of forecasting spring infestations of the native budworm Helicoverpa punctigera, a serious pest of various legume crops (especially lupins in Western Australia and field peas in Victoria), and the main early-season pest of cotton. It is now known that these infestations are initiated by immigrants from the far inland, where a research programme now approaching completion has located very large numbers of caterpillars on native vegetation during 3 of the last 4 winters. These inland populations emerge as moths in August-September, and are carried into cropping regions by the wind; damage is caused either by the offspring of these moths (in legume crops), or by the subsequent (second} generation (in cotton)