“Review the challenges you had last year and have a plan in place as to how you’re going to handle them this year,” said Warren Ward, agronomy specialist with the Canola Council of Canada.

“Maybe look back over a couple of years and see the challenges you dealt with on the farm and what you can do to make sure that they’re not going to be yield limiting in 2024.”

Issues like blackleg or herbicide-resistant weeds can be anticipated from last year’s field, but crop pests might be different year to year.

Trevor Herzog, Western Canada agronomy lead with Corteva Agriscience, said growers should be ready if it looks like another dry spring is in the works.

“Keep an eye on forecasts and weather. … If the forecast does look dry, then a farmer may decide to start seeding a little sooner just to try to take advantage of the existing moisture before it blows away in the wind or starts to disappear from that ideal seeding depth for the crop they’re considering.”

Herzog also reminded farmers to have seed treatment and weed control plans in place. In particular, he noted seed treatments that target flea beetles, cutworms and seedling blackleg.

“If you have patches of weeds that seem to get an early start and they are taking advantage of the early season moisture, make sure you have a weed control plan figured out to take away that early season pressure on the crop that’s trying to grow through a stressful environment,” he added.

After applying a tank mix with glyphosate, producers should “monitor those weeds as they get the odd shower here or there. And then maybe [apply] an early season in-crop application of some herbicides to keep the weeds at bay and allow that crop to get established.”

Flea beetles and grasshoppers

Although flea beetles have become a commonly cursed scourge of canola in the early growing season, 2023 was not the worst beetle pressure Western Canada has seen. Last year was relatively quiet on the insect pest front from a Prairie-wide perspective, said Ward.

That doesn’t mean this year will be the same.

“Even if you had a good year with [flea beetles] last year, don’t be lulled into a false sense of security.”

The same goes for grasshoppers.

“If it remains dry in the spring, that will be something to watch out for into the new year,” Ward said.

Other insect pests

Aside from localized populations in Alberta, diamondback moths were not out in force in 2023, said Ward, though the Manitoba pest report noted spraying in all regions except the southwest and counts up to 60 per square foot.

Looking to 2024, the moth is always a pest species to look out for, Ward said.

“They come up with the wind currents from the United States. Keep an eye on the monitoring maps and the traps that are out there to predict where and when they might become an issue.”

Alfalfa looper was another pest reported in parts of the Prairies.

Loopers were not a species of note in the season’s pest summary, although Ward noted the green caterpillar confounded other western Canadian producers and agronomists.

“It looks a little bit like bertha armyworm but greener,” he said, noting alfalfa loopers appear earlier.

Ward urged producers to brush up on pest identification knowledge so they manage the right problem when it appears.

“In some cases, [species] may look similar but don’t do similar damage or, in some cases, they do similar damage. So, it’s a matter of knowing what you’re dealing with and that’ll give you the options that are available.”

The disease usuals

Verticillium stripe is under the microscope of agronomists and researchers, and is specifically a disease of note in the eastern Priries.

The pathogen was the second-biggest threat identified by Manitoba Agriculture’s 2023 Canola Disease Survey in terms of prevalence. One in every four surveyed fields was infected. Blackleg was found in 86 per cent of fields.

While Manitoba is the Prairie hotbed for verticillium stripe, Ward said symptoms have been found in eastern and central Saskatchewan as well, and it’s not likely to stop there, as it moves westward.

There are few management strategies, but there’s at least one identified condition that seems to exacerbate the issue.

“Dry, stressed conditions later on in the growing season is where it seems to show up worse,” said Ward.

“You can’t really scout for it until later in the season. Even at swathing time, it’s tough to distinguish. The best time to scout for it is after harvest when you can go out there and identify it on stubble.”

Much of the Prairies saw a season of low sclerotinia pressure, but Ward urged producers to remember that good growing conditions for canola are often friendly to sclerotinia.

“Looking at what conditions are during the growing season is really going to be the number one factor as to whether we see that disease developing next year.”

Producers should be “thinking about it and going through the risk assessment for sclerotinia as we get into that flowering time of year,” he added.

If there was blackleg in the field in 2023, assume it will also be there this year and plan accordingly, said Ward.

“If you know you had higher blackleg levels last year, especially if you sent some samples away for race identification to a lab, you’ve got some more information where you can start looking at finding a variety that is resistant to that race.”

Aster yellows

Last year was also the worst year since 2012 for aster yellows on the Prairies, particularly in areas of western Saskatchewan and into Alberta, said Ward.

The 2023 Canola Disease Survey found aster yellows symptoms in 20 per cent of the 100 fields monitored. Between 2018 and 2022, the survey found prevalence of the disease at 10 per cent or below.

Crop pathologists also noted the surge in aster leafhoppers observed earlier in the season. A vector for aster yellows, the insects tipped surveyors that 2023 might be a bad aster yellows year.

There aren’t many control options for aster yellows, Ward noted. The best producers can do is watch for reports of aster leafhoppers moving in from the U.S.

“It’s not something you can really plan around [aside from] looking for it. The chances of it being really bad two years in a row are low but not inconceivable.”

Weeds

Winter is also a good time for growers to assess options for herbicide-resistant weed management, Ward said.

“If you know you have resistance on your farm, look at planning right now what you can do. A herbicide system would be one [strategy]. Give yourself the most options to be able to deal with those weeds.”

Resources

In-depth information on insects, diseases and weeds common in canola, including management strategies, is available on the Canola Council of Canada website. Information on a number of crop pests is also available on the Prairie Pest Monitoring Network website.

The post Prepping for the 2024 canola crop appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

The commission identifies 20 species of insects as primary pests (19 beetle species and one species of moth). Over 33 species are considered to be secondary pests (21 beetle species, 11 moth species, booklice and grain mites).

Information needed to identify these pests can be found at the CGC website.

If there are pests in grain, control options include approved insecticides and physical control methods like lowering grain temperature through aeration.

The post Watch for post-harvest grain pests appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Farmers hear a lot of such whizzy claims. But a Lethbridge researcher is so confident in nanotech-based crop protection that he’s working to ensure it doesn’t follow the same regulatory route as GMOs.

“I’m pretty optimistic that by the end of the decade there will be something commercially viable,” said Justin Pahara, a scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada in Lethbridge.

He is working with nanoparticles that bind to agricultural pests such as lygus bugs and cutworms, two species he’s selected as initial targets. The tiny particles do so without harming beneficial plants and insects.

His bigger goal, however, is to create crop treatments that tackle the resistance, international trade and environmental hassles that conventional pesticides so often present.

“All of this is putting pressure on us to create new crop treatments that are less toxic and more species-specific so they don’t impact broader ecosystems,” said Pahara.

The scientist also sees opportunities for producers to expand market reach to countries where regulations prohibit the sale of products treated with conventional pesticides.

“If we get this right, there are so many possibilities for Canadian producers to differentiate themselves from everyone else, beyond just managing pests and whatnot.”

At its simplest, nanotechnology is the science of manipulating extremely small objects called nanoparticles.

“Human hair, if we put it in nanometres, is about 100,000 nanometres across. A nanostructure is typically one to 100 nanometres in size,” said Pahara.

“They’re bigger than a typical small molecule such as a water molecule or carbon dioxide molecule or even the molecules in typical broad spectrum pesticides.”

Medical foundation

Although Hollywood tends to approach nanotechnology as something close to science fiction, its real-world effectiveness has been proven in the biomedical sphere, where it’s been used and refined for decades.

For example, those who received a COVID-19 vaccine have already had experience with nanotechnology. In it, nano lipid vesicles carried the vaccine into human cells.

The medical world’s use of nanotechnology has given scientists a platform on which to build agricultural applications, said Pahara. But the principles of nanotechnology in medicine can be lost when carried into ag. That’s a challenge for researchers.

“For example, in the world of health care you can take a medicine, put it in a needle and inject a person so the ingredients go directly to the source of where they need to go.

“In the ag sector, we can’t expect a producer to be out in the field with syringes injecting all their plants or insects. We don’t have that same benefit so that adds extra complexity to what we’re trying to achieve.”

The key to Pahara’s work is identifying the right combination of nanoparticle and active ingredient, in this case DNA and RNA, that will target the specific part of a pest where it will be most effective.

Tightly targeted

This specificity separates these nanostructures from conventional pesticides, which generically attack a target as well as desirable organisms that happen to get in the way.

“For example, imidacloprid is a very common insecticide that’s more or less a neurotoxin to insects. It mimics nicotine and you’re basically targeting the nervous system of the insect,” he said.

“But many different insects and animals have nervous systems, so to some extent this small molecule has a very, very broad impact across many different systems.”

Pahara and company have not discovered a crop treatment for lygus bugs and cutworms. They’re still building the required technology.

However, if successful and proven safe, the possibilities are theoretically endless. That would set the stage for developing similar treatments for a host of insects and weeds.

“One thing that nanotechnology allows us to do is control and create larger molecules that have added functionality. That allows us to build in more control measures and have more flexibility in what sort of activity and outcomes we want these devices to have.”

Right rules

Before that, Pahara wants to ensure the environmental and human safety of nanotech-driven pest controls so they don’t face the same regulatory scrutiny as GMOs. He serves as chair of a Standards Council of Canada working group focused on the environmental health and safety of nanotechnology.

“We’re participating in international projects that aim to create standard methods that help scientists and regulatory bodies rigorously identify whether certain nano systems are toxic or not to the environment.

“We’re trying to start it now, while we’re in the early phases of the actual technology development.”

If or when a nanotech-based crop treatment arrives on the market, Pahara is excited at the possibility of being part of a made-in-Canada and made-in-Alberta success story.

“Western Canada could have some bragging rights here.”

The post A (very) small solution to big ag problems appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

“One thing biologists have noticed is there are certain varieties of wheat that, for whatever reason … where the midge will not lay eggs,” said James Harynuk, a professor in the Faculty of Science at the University of Alberta.

“But they also know this wheat will protect other plants nearby. Whatever it is, there’s some molecule or collection of molecules being generated by this variety of wheat that are being released into the air.”

Harynuk and his colleagues are trying to identify the midge-repelling molecules. The next step is to determine the genes responsible for generating them. Once identified, they can be bred into new strains of wheat.

“Once you have this wheat that is giving good yields and protecting itself from the wheat midge, you can mix that in with your crop, because it protects the plants around it,” he said. “And then the rest of your wheat can be another variety that produces high yields.”

During an average year on the Prairies, wheat midge can cause up to $60 million in crop damage. That number can jump to $300 million in a bad year, said Harynuk.

“Wheat midge is the number one insect pest threatening wheat crops across Western Canada. They damage wheat by laying their eggs in the kernels to hatch their larvae.”

He said new wheat varieties may be available soon.

“Our goal is that by this time next year, we should know what the genetic markers are. And then it’s just a question of how quickly plant breeders can incorporate those genes into new varieties. It’s not going to be that far off.”

Depending on the molecules identified by researchers, deploying molecule emitters in fields could be a Band-Aid solution for dealing with wheat midge outbreaks until new varieties can be bred, said Harynuk, although he noted this could add labour costs.

“You might need 30 or 40 of these things per quarter section,” he said. “Yes, it’s a pain and a lot of work to do that. It’s an added cost, but maybe it’s not as bad as losing an entire field if there’s a bad wheat midge outbreak. It’s possible there will be an emergency Band-Aid solution available for next season.”

Working with Harynuk are Boyd Mori and A. Paulina de la Mata at the University of Alberta as well as Alejandro Costamagna, Curt McCartney and Chaminda Weeraddana at the University of Manitoba.

Results Driven Agriculture Research (RDAR) provided $660,000 for the research, with another $697,000 (in cash and in-kind support) coming from several groups including the University of Manitoba and the Canadian Wheat Cluster (which is administered by Alberta Wheat and its sister organizations in Manitoba and Saskatchewan).

The post Wheat varieties could move from midge tolerance to midge resistance appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

The Insect Research Facility, a first in Western Canada, will be led by entomologist Sean Prager who was recruited four years ago “in response to increased need for entomological research, training and instruction,” the university said in a release.

Among the funders are the Western Grains Research Foundation, which is contributing $500,000 and the province’s canola, wheat and pulse commissions.

Among the goals are to find new methods for predicting pest outbreaks and using beneficials to lower pesticide use.

The post Bugs get their due in new facility appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

“It’s kind of insidious,” said AgCanada entomologist Tyler Wist. “Often if you’re not out looking for it you don’t even know it’s there. Then at harvest you’re like, ‘Hey — where did my yield go?’”

In bad years, the bright-orange flies have caused yield loss of more than 50 per cent in Alberta, and forecasts are calling for higher numbers of wheat midge this year. Provincial officials say the area east of Edmonton, in particular, is a “high-risk situation,” especially if there’s higher-than-normal rainfall — the kind of conditions the insect thrives under.

The pest not only hurts yields but quality.

“Midge-damaged seeds are not great for milling,” said Wist. “When you take your grain to the elevator after a strong midge year, it can be graded down from a one to a two because it’s got more midge damage than it’s comfortable accepting.”

Wheat midge is also frustratingly resilient. Researchers have found they can lie dormant in cocoons indefinitely until wet field conditions cause them to come out and play. Soil core samples are taken to project the number of cocoons and forecast potential outbreaks.

“They’re like a ticking time bomb in your field,” said Wist.

And because the forecast for wheat midge’s natural predator is low in Alberta this year, wheat midge-controlling tools in 2020 are limited to midge-tolerant varieties, scouting and the use of dimethoate spray.

“You have the option of trying to plant so that your heading date doesn’t coincide with the wheat midge emergence but that’s always tough to do,” said Wist, who jokes the pests come out just as farmers are out on the lake for Canada Day.

It’s pretty close to the truth though as they attack around late June or early July just as wheat heads are starting to emerge, laying eggs on them which hatch into larvae.

“The larvae crawl down and start feeding on the developing seed. That’s how yield and grade loss happen,” said Wist. “It’s well synchronized with spring wheat so the same rains that get spring wheat to pop out of the ground also get the wheat midge to pop out of the ground.”

Even without this synchronization, wheat midge can also attack the wheat’s tillers because they emerge later than the plants’ primary heads.

“You have to be vigilant the whole time your crop may be in the danger zone,” he said.

Finding and fighting midge

Because it’s difficult to detect wheat midge with the naked eye, you have to make a point of looking for it. Forecasts (available at www.alberta.ca — search for ‘wheat midge forecast’) help, but your best bet is to take a net to the field (preferably at dusk when they start flying) and do sweeps.

There are a couple of key numbers to keep in mind while scouting.

One midge on 10 wheat heads is considered ‘grade threshold’ or the minimum amount you can have without your wheat being downgraded. One midge on five heads is the point where you have a real problem.

“That’s where you get 15 per cent yield loss at the yield threshold,” said Wist. “If you can catch them while they’re emerging you can spray them and kill the adults.”

Pheromone-based traps can also catch male wheat midge.

“They mimic a female wheat midge smell, attracting males by releasing a chemical concoction that they fly towards. They start emerging from the soil and come right to those traps because it’s their biological imperative to get to a female before another male does.”

However, you likely won’t need to scout at all if you plant one of the around 35 wheat midge-resistant varieties on the market today, said Wist.

All feature the Sm1 gene which essentially makes the wheat kernels unpalatable to the midge larvae. These varieties have been on the market for a little over a decade and the threat of wheat midge developing resistance is a distinct possibility.

And just like some people may enjoy ice cream with pickles, entomologists quickly noticed a two per cent subset of wheat midge — a.k.a. “virulent midge” — aren’t put off by the Sm1 gene.

“They were able to grow to adulthood,” said Wist. “That’s a big red flag because if those wheat midge are the only ones that survive then they can pass on their resistance to the next generation and eventually you have a population of wheat midge that just doesn’t care about the Sm1 gene.”

Researchers also quickly discovered that the virulent midge contained a recessive gene.

“So if the wheat midge larvae had two copies of the recessive gene they could overcome Sm1.”

To combat this, resistant varieties come with a built-in ‘refuge’ — 10 per cent of the seed in a bag is midge-susceptible wheat. All wheat midge-tolerant varieties today contain this refuge and have ‘VB’ (varietal blend) on the packaging after the name.

“Right now there’s no excuse not to plant midge-tolerant wheat,” said Wist. “If you look at a forecast map and it says you’re in a red zone or in an area near a red zone you could be in trouble with wheat midge. ‘Plant it and forget about it’ is one way I’ve heard it described.”

Insecticide can be effective but requires careful timing around its emergence.

One of the biggest problems with spraying is the fact that farmers have lost an important tool. Chlorpyrifos — formerly the most commonly used insecticide for wheat midge — is undergoing deregistration by the Pest Management Regulatory Agency for large-scale crop use.

Dimethoate is now the sole insecticide farmers can use, but Wist believes it’s not as effective because it strikes the adult midge more than the eggs.

“It hasn’t been shown to be as efficacious against the eggs,” he said.

In certain conditions and certain years, producers have a natural ally which goes by the tongue-twisting title of Macroglenes penetrans. A parasitoid (which differs from a parasite due to the fact that it kills its host), the wasp-like insect uses its stinger to lay eggs into other insects.

“They come out about four or five days after the wheat midge, which themselves only live four or five days. The parasitoid comes in and stings the egg and the first-instar larvae and puts its own egg inside it.”

Basically, the parasitoid larvae overwinter below the soil inside a wheat midge and re-emerge in the springtime.

“In the spring you get a little black wasp instead of a little orange fly,” said Wist.

But that means this year’s parasitism won’t have an effect until next year and that’s bad news for Alberta, as samples found very, very low parasitism in a survey conducted last year.

The post Keep watch for wheat midge this growing season appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

The survey, conducted in the fall, found increased levels of sawfly damage in Forty Mile County. However, sawfly numbers seem to have declined in Willow Creek and Vulcan Counties, but that might just be a reflection of the randomness of the survey and not of the region. There may be fields in the region counties that had higher cutting levels.

The wheat stem sawfly map is based on cut stem counts, with damage ratings based on 85 fields in 19 municipalities. In each field, the number of wheat stem sawfly cuts and the number of uncut stems are determined in a one-metre area of stubble in four locations.

The per cent of stems cut by sawfly gives an indication of the number of reproductive adult sawflies that will emerge in late June through early July. Winter conditions have very little impact on sawfly populations and a high proportion of wheat stems cut in the fall will produce adults. Producers in areas with moderate to high levels of cutting should consider using solid stem wheat as a control strategy. Alternatively non-host broadleaf crops or oats can be grown to avoid sawfly damage.

Female sawflies lay eggs inside grass and grassy crop stems; the eggs hatch and tunnel inside stems until the crop starts to dry down near harvest. As the crop starts to ripen the sawfly larva migrates to the stem base and cuts a notch most of the way through the stem, wind and/or wet weather cause the cut stems to break and the heads to fall to the ground.

Feeding damage from the tunnelling can result in hidden yield losses of 10 to 15 per cent in each stem affected with additional losses because of lodging at harvest.

When populations are low it is typical to have small localized populations of sawfly that affect only one field or even just a portion of one field. At lower populations, wheat stem sawfly also tends to have a very strong edge effect where they migrate into the current-year crop from the previous-year stubble.

Parasitism can reduce populations and reduce the level of cutting. A parasitic wasp, Bracon cephi, has been shown to have significant impact on sawfly populations.

It is possible that population hot spots still exist in areas of lower risk, but the overall sawfly risk remains lower than the outbreak levels of the early 2000s. However, the increased sawfly damage in many spots of southern Alberta signals a resurgence due to the drier conditions over the past few years.

The post Wheat stem sawfly survey finds some hot spots in southern Alberta appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

“We don’t have very many insects that are resistant to insecticides here on the Prairies, so luckily, it’s not that widespread of an issue,” said Boyd Mori, researcher and assistant professor at the University of Alberta.

“We have a very harsh climate, so most of our species only have one generation a year that we’re spraying with insecticide. Every time you’re applying an insecticide, you’re increasing selection pressure on those populations. We don’t have that here.

“So there are very few insects on the Prairies that have insecticide resistance or are tolerant to some insecticides.”

But very few is not the same as none, said Mori. In southern Alberta — and particularly in areas of alfalfa seed production — insecticide resistance is beginning to crop up in populations of alfalfa weevil.

“The issue of alfalfa weevil insecticide resistance really came to the forefront in about 2015 when growers and agronomists really noticed a lack of control with some of the synthetic pyrethroid products we’re using,” said Mori.

Further research confirmed that this lack of control was a result of insecticide resistance.

“It’s not widespread based on our work, but there are select regions in southern Alberta where we’ve noticed this resistance,” said Mori.

One of the goals of the ongoing research is to map where these populations are.

“It’s primarily in areas with high alfalfa seed production, around Rosemary and down toward Vauxhall.”

For those growers, insecticide resistance could leave them with few management options for alfalfa weevil, which can cause serious yield losses in alfalfa fields.

“If we’re having failure with insecticides, we’re going to either have to switch products — and unfortunately there aren’t a lot of good products available at the moment — or we’ll have to rely more on the natural enemies that are present in the field,” he said.

Natural enemies

That’s something the research team will be looking at as well.

“Clearly we’re wiping out beneficial insects while we’re spraying insecticides,” he said. “But currently, the economic thresholds we use to determine if we’re going to spray don’t consider if there’s natural enemies present there to help control populations.”

Researchers know there are two parasitoids that help manage alfalfa weevil larvae populations, but it’s difficult to tell if larvae have been parasitized in the field.

“You can’t just look at a larvae and see that it looks sickly compared to other ones. It’s not that easy.”

So the team has created a molecular tool that will allow them to extract the DNA and determine if — and at what level — the larvae have been parasitized.

“What we’re hoping to do there is show growers that maybe they don’t need to spray an insecticide — maybe they have high levels of parasitoids that are going to help control these weevils, especially if we allow these parasitoid populations to build up year over year,” he said.

“That’s the ultimate goal — to be able to say that you have a parasitism level such that you don’t need to spray insecticide.”

That’s not possible to do right now with the existing economic thresholds, he added, but there’s a “big push” to move to what’s called a ‘dynamic action threshold.’

“For those action thresholds, not only would you be scouting for pests when trying to determine if you need to spray, you’d also be scouting for any natural enemies that are present,” said Mori.

“We know these natural enemies are there. We know they’re helping to control the populations. But we can’t necessarily say for certain that they’re taking out a certain percentage of our pests. That’s an area that really needs more work.”

But the economics of preserving this free labour could be a big boost to the bottom line, he added. One study from the 1990s valued the work of a wheat midge parasitoid wasp in Saskatchewan at over $248 million at that time. Another more recent study (this one from southeast England) found that predators and parasitoids of English grain aphid to be worth nearly $4 million a year in that area.

“That was just one parasitoid on one pest species. They can have huge impacts,” said Mori. “There’s a big push right now to conserve natural enemies, and we’re trying to get that information to growers.”

The post Resistant insect populations growing in southern Alberta appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

The five insects covered by these maps are bertha army worm, cabbage seedpod weevil, cutworm, diamondback moth, and wheat midge. The maps have colour-coded pins indicating the infestation risk level (from low to severe).

The website of the pest monitoring network (which can be found by going to www.alberta.ca and searching for ‘pest monitoring’) also has insect survey and forecast maps for six pests, videos on scouting and trapping, and information on invasive species.

The post Crop pest survey tools up and running appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

“We see it almost every year in southern Alberta, but it’s creeping up to central Alberta, too,” said provincial crop specialist Harry Brook.

“After the very difficult harvest, there is plenty of wet and damp grain. Variable temperatures are causing grain heating and that attracts grain beetles. That is telling me that people are taking their grain to the elevator and having it turned back because there are live insects in the bin and the truckload of grain.”

There are several ways to deal with insects such as grain beetles. The Farmer Pesticide Certificate provides information on effective and safe use of pesticides. An endorsement is needed to access the grain fumigant Phostoxin.

“But it can be dangerous which means there are a lot of safety issues around using it,” said Brook. “Once it is in the bin, you have to seal it off. It needs temperatures in the grain bin of 12 C to 15 C or better before it will activate.”

If it is colder than that, producers cannot use the fumigant.

“It is not effective, and it can be dangerous because those pellets then don’t break down,” he said. “It could be an issue later when you’re taking the grain to the elevator.”

Cold weather can provide one of the easiest ways to deal with grain beetles in a bin, but inside temperatures need to be -20 C or lower for up to two weeks, said Brook.

“When it gets down to -20 C, aerate your grain and keep it at that temperature. Keep it at that temperature for two weeks, and you will effectively kill off all insects in that bin.

“Aeration is effective under cold conditions, as it freeze-dries the beetles. If the temperatures are only -15 C, keep it down for three or four weeks, and that will kill them as well. The warmer it gets above -20 C, the longer it takes to kill them, but it does. It is one of the few effective and simple means to control the beetles.”

For more info, go to alberta.ca.

The post Grain beetles on the rise after wet harvest appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.