What if, instead of blanket spraying an entire field to wipe out invading insects, you gave them something to munch on that you want them to eat?

Trap cropping — where plants favoured by a pest insect are planted to draw insects away from a main cash crop (usually planted later) — is making new inroads with farmers, particularly those with small to mid-sized fields and who want to lower insecticide use, according to Héctor Cárcamo, a senior research scientist at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.

WHY IT MATTERS: Spray costs, resistance concerns and increasing awareness of beneficial insects have driven more research attention to integrated pest management practices. In some cases, that’s meant taking a leaf out of our grandparents’ book.

Speaking to pulse growers near Taber, Alta., in December, Cárcamo pointed to various Prairie research projects testing the concept in pest hot spots.

Trap cropping relies on the idea that, by concentrating pests in designated areas for food and egg laying, farmers can monitor and manage the pest population more efficiently. Maybe they can limit their spraying to that limited area, or release beneficial insects.

Spraying a smaller area might mean less input cost, while also keeping things friendlier for beneficial insects and making control efforts more targeted and precise.

Matchmaking pests and trap crops

The secret is finding which trap crop will draw the most pests away from the crop the farmer is trying to protect, Cárcamo said.

For faba bean growers, lygus bugs are one pest insect they’d like to keep well clear of their fields. They also might be enough of a picky eater for trap crops to work.

Cárcamo’s work into trap crops against lygus bugs was highlighted by the Western Producer last year. At that time, the researcher noted that the pulse crop’s timing — filling pods while surrounding crops are drying down — tends to puts a target on the still juicy faba bean plants for any lygus bugs in the area.

Researchers tried various trap crops as bait, along with targeted insecticide and beneficial predator release. They tried mustard, canola, hemp and sunflowers.

Winter peas got a good jump in development, while spring-planted peas faced struggled to achieve the needed difference in crop staging compared to the protected crop. Of the seven crops tested, one was the clear lygus bug favourite.

“I’ll give you a hint. It’s yellow flowers and produces oil. Canola was the clear favourite,” Cárcamo said.

Sunflowers also showed potential, echoing results also seen in China with a different species of lygus bug.

Last year’s coverage of Cárcamo’s lygus bug work also noted that faba beans planted next to safflower showed less damage than those planted next to canola in 2022, and that safflower seemed to retain the pest insects for longer.

How realistic is it?

There is promise in trap cropping fields, those listening to Cárcamo’s presentation heard. At the same time, results will vary depending on the pest and specific strategies used. There’s timing, field arrangement, pest pressure and follow-up management like local spraying and beneficials introduction that are critical.

In the faba bean trial, for instance, while canola had lygus bugs flocking to the trap, it also had to be followed up with well-timed insecticide to keep the bugs from exploding back into the protected crop.

There’s also the question of how well it meshes with the average farms. Most farms on the Prairies today are large, with large fields. More complex and time consuming agronomic pest management alternatives may not be attractive.

“Trap cropping, you need to do things at different times and some farms have thousands and thousands of acres. If someone has the time, maybe they are retiring and want to play around, then try trap crops,” said Cárcamo.

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But the wheat stem sawfly, a species native to Alberta, still caused moderate to high cutting damages in areas where the pest is most commonly found from year to year.

WHY IT MATTERS: Wheat stem sawfly can cause up to 15 per cent yield loss, but there are options for Alberta growers to minimize their losses.

“Sawfly have one generation per year, and they’re an insect that is going to start flying and looking for spots to lay eggs in early to mid-July, depending on the weather,” said Amanda Jorgensen, insect management specialist with Alberta Ag.

The females move into wheat fields from grassy ditches or wheat fields from the previous year, and they will lay their eggs in the wheat stems, where larvae will feed on them.

“They’re going to eat in there throughout the summer,” said Jorgensen.

“As we get closer to the end of the fall and towards harvest, they’ll move down to the bottom of the stem, sometimes below ground, in the soil, and that’s where they will hole up for the winter and eventually pupate and come out in spring.”

“They’re an insect that is going to do well in those stubble conditions, no matter what we do. The important thing in terms of natural control for this pest is that they’re strongly influenced by their parasitoid, a wasp known as Bracon cephi.”

The parasitoid, which is also a native species, has a different life cycle than the wheat stem sawfly. It has two generations per year, and the second generation is the one that gives the best control to the wheat stem sawfly. The parasitoid overwinters in stubble at higher populations than the wheat stem sawfly.

“Our cutting height for stubble actually impacts the natural enemy’s life cycle, quite a bit more than the sawfly,” said Jorgensen.

If producers want to help the parasitoid survive, they should leave about six inches of stem stubble in the field.

The wheat stem sawfly is affected by weather. Wheat stem sawflies can flourish with an early harvest. They also do better in hot, dry and even drought-like conditions.

However, in 2025, there was a reduction in population in the wheat stem sawfly in Alberta.

Forty Mile County and Warner County saw higher percentages of cutting and higher sawfly populations.

“But really, outside of those hotspots, we did not see much,” Jorgensen said.

There were reports of higher rates of parasitism, due to the better moisture situation.

In areas with consistently high sawfly pressures, growers can use durum wheat varieties with solid stems. There is also a solid stem Canadian Red Spring variety that will be available, as well as some semi-solid varieties.

“While we were doing our surveying, we saw quite a bit of use of those solid stem varieties. There are producers in those hotspots that are starting to switch to using those varieties to manage sawflies,” Jorgensen said.

Scientists have some idea of what will happen to the wheat stem sawfly population in 2026.

“We get a good idea of what those populations are like going into the winter from our survey,” Jorgensen said.

“We don’t see a lot of winter kill. They’re nestled cosy in those stems. We’re probably going to see similar amounts of sawfly coming out in the spring, as we have now in our surveys,” they said.

A high rate of parasitism may cause a bit of reduction, but the pressure at the start of the year is not going to be as high as it could have been.

“The conditions next year are going to determine whether we see an increase again in those populations,” Jorgensen said.

If there is a dry year with an early harvest, and parasitoids can’t establish well, there might be an increase in sawfly population.

“But we’re going into next year with lower pressure than we did coming into this year for sure.”

While the wheat stem sawfly can reproduce in most other cereals, except for oats, the insects pose the biggest economic concern for wheat.

In a heavy wheat steam sawfly infestation, a producer can lose 10 to 15 per cent of their yield from sawflies feeding and reducing seed weight and production quality.

“But the big loss with wheat stem sawfly is when they cut the stem, and you can lose that complete stem and make it unharvestable,” Jorgensen said.

“It can be dramatic if there are high numbers. Each sawfly is going to cut off one stem. Typically, the wheat stem sawfly will cut more stems around the edges of a field, so the centre of the field will not see many losses unless there is a tight crop rotation.”

Growers who continually have problems with the wheat stem sawfly should consider using a semi-solid or solid wheat variety and have a diverse crop rotation. Wheat stem sawfly cannot reproduce on broadleaf crops and cannot develop on oat crops.

“Just keep your eye out when you’re out harvesting to see what kind of amount of cutting you have if you’re in that sawfly area,” Jorgensen said.

“Producers might want to keep in mind what their individual fields look like when they’re making those decisions.”

The 2025 survey was completed by Alberta Ag’s Plant and Bee Health Surveillance staff, which includes Jorgensen, Shelley Barkley and a technician. Agronomists and agriculture fieldmen lined up fields, and producers offered their fields for survey. The survey is completed after harvest.

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“I don’t find these to be laws, commandments or requirements for soil health management,” the North Dakota crop advisor said. “These are nice guidelines to help guide some of the practices,” Briese said.

“I’ve learned that each farm is different and unique, and [so are] the challenges.”

At the same time, he acknowledged that integrating soil health principles can be daunting.

His recommendation checklist is basic: identify the problem, set a goal, generate possible solutions and plan and measure efficacy.

Start with the low-hanging fruit by identifying repetitive issues, he said, like excess moisture in a minimal tillage field, for example.

“What can you do? Can you manage residue? Can you do some type of vertical tillage? Can you do some type of cover crop? Maybe [you] want to try a combination of those practices to make it work? And then make that plan, write it out and then evaluate.”

If there are multiple solutions and the means to use them, Briese encouraged producers to run strip trials of single and combination solutions to see which ones provide the most benefit. It takes at least a full year to assess the success or failure of any new protocol, he warned.

Building soil armour can be achieved with any combination of reduced tillage, cover crops, leaving residue and infusing carbon into the soil, all of which can mitigate rainfall impact, improve soil stability and reduce runoff issues.

Briese’s first recommendation is to leave as much residue standing as possible, though it can be challenging to redistribute it evenly.

“The continuously living root is important for a lot of the soil microbes, but it’s really difficult to do in the northern climates,” said Briese.

“But maximizing that time of having plant growth in there and doing as much as you can with that, within reason, makes a lot of sense to me.”

An integrated pest management strategy for insects and disease is essential. Rate, timing and thresholds for any application must be known but also have to be economically feasible.

Briese said Mother Nature provides some of the strongest pest inhibitors through black and green ground beetles and predatory insects like the parasitic ichneumon wasp, which lays its eggs in caterpillars.

Ground beetles are usually nocturnal and target larvae and pests as their primary food source. They thrive in cover crops and long grasses found in orchards, vineyards and field borders.

“These things are mercenaries against other insects. They are voracious feeders and eat so many other different types of insects,” he said. “Some of them will also feed on weed seeds as well as cover crop seeds broadcasted on the surface of the soil, so they’re not always great, but for the most part, they are.”

Below the soil, propagation of mycorrhizae, fungi that help plants gather nutrients, and rhizobia, which allow legumes to fix atmospheric nitrogen, are critical plant growth tools, he added.

Briese is particularly fond of naturally occurring biocontrol nematodes that carry a bacterium that infects larvae or caterpillars and consumes them from the inside out.

“These are very cool and interesting organisms, but unfortunately, they’re difficult to manage. One of the things that we can do is try to promote habitat,” he said.

“That’s probably the most powerful thing you can do as a land manager, which comes down to reducing that tillage.”

Cover crops provide protection and food sources to support nitrogen-fixing bacteria and ensure all beneficial organisms have a host.

Earthworms are the poster invertebrate for soil health, but not all earthworms are created equal and few are native.

“The vast majority of earthworms that we have [were] brought over and introduced,” said Briese. “They’re not necessarily causing huge detriment to our soils, but the [Asian] jumping worms can and do.”

First reported in Ontario, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia in 2022, the jumping worm, at seven to 16 centimetres, is larger and more voracious than the average earthworm and congregates in higher densities.

They have not yet been noted in Manitoba. In places where they have a foothold, however, Briese said they clear surface residue and detritus until the soil is open and bare, leaving it susceptible to other issues. Its castings change the soil’s physical, chemical and biological activity, which also impacts microbial sustainability.

Livestock

Briese said he struggles with the integration of livestock as a soil pillar. Some farmers don’t have ready access to livestock but animals do maintain and build excellent soil health.

“Temper that risk with respect to your individual farm. I think chicken tractors [movable chicken coops] are cool, but I don’t think everybody needs one,” he said.

“Economics is always a consideration of this. Diversity is a powerful tool, especially crop diversity and cover crops.”

A version of this article first appeared in Farmtario.

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If the scientific name doesn’t sound familiar, the common name certainly will. It’s the family of beetles that includes ladybugs and Asian lady beetles.

“Everybody recognizes the adults and everyone knows they’re beneficial,” Jordan Bannerman, an entomologist at the University of Manitoba said.

“But every year [Manitoba Agriculture entomologist] John Gavloski and I get emails from folks with pictures of these little alligator-like looking guys and they get worried about them. What are these? They’re all over my crops. How do I control them?”

The answer to that last question is, don’t. The ferocious little predators are friends.

There are a fair number of lady beetle species, all of which have similar larvae. They’re long and narrow and textured in a way that suggests the bumps along an alligator’s back. The colours are also distinctive.

“They’re going to be a medium grey to black and they’re always going to have a secondary colouration,” Bannerman said. “The most common secondary colours are either white or orange – some that are a little bit more yellow, but they’re always going to be some kind of a dark colour with some kind of a bright highlight. That is very consistent with both our native and non-native species.”

The agricultural relationship with the beetles goes back a long way. European peasant farmers in the Middle Ages knew about the little red beetle that moved through their crops, eating aphids, scale insects, thrips, mites and mealybugs, as well as the eggs laid by other bugs. They were so welcomed that they were eventually called ‘Our Lady’ beetles, a reference to the Virgin Mary, to whom Christian farmers prayed for protection. Over time, that turned into the now common misnomer, ladybug.

Classification

Despite the name, the beetles stem from a different family than true bugs.

Their family name comes from the Latin word coccineus, meaning scarlet, and they’re members of the order Coleoptera, denoted by their two hind wings covered with a hard-shelled forewing, both sets folding over the back and meeting neatly in the middle.

True bugs, in contrast, belong to the order Hemiptera, which boast a different type of wing set and tough, leathery forewings that develop into a membranous tip laid on top of an additional set of membranous hind wings.

True bugs have stylet-like mouthparts for piercing and sucking, while the lady beetle has a full set of jaws for biting and chewing, typical of beetles.

Crop benefit

There are several estimates of how many aphids a lady beetle will eat. According to one study looking at cereal fields, an adult of the native 13-spotted lady beetle may eat 110 to 160 aphids per day, depending on the surrounding temperature and type of aphid species available.

Ontario studies looking at the seven-spotted lady beetle (an introduced species) in soybeans found that consumption ranged from 80 aphids a day for males and 115 for females.

At the larval stage, they’re “eating machines,” Bannerman said. “They start eating in the morning and they eat the rest of the day until they’re done, and they do it the next day, feeding on the same things.”

Those same Ontario studies put third-instar larvae consumption at 105 aphids a day.

The adults, meanwhile, have other things to do. They hibernate over the winter, mate in the spring and then get about laying their oval-shaped eggs, anywhere between 30 to 1,000 over the season.

Those eggs are situated as close to a stand of aphids as possible, so the less mobile but voracious offspring have instant access to food.

The larvae, in fact, are chewing the moment they get into the world. They eat the shell of the egg from which they just hatched. They may eat any infertile eggs in the clutch. That provides their first fuel before getting to work on nearby aphids.

Then, the eating and growing really gets underway. The larvae go through four instar stages, each time emerging from their moult a bit bigger, but still bearing that alligator-esque shape. After reaching their full growth, the eating pauses for a day or so before they harden into orange-bodied, spotted pupae. Adults emerge a week or two later.

Alberta has 13 species of lady beetles, including both native and introduced species.

– This article was originally published at the Manitoba Co-operator.

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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.

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“All of the weeds here can come from other parts of the world, mostly Europe and some from Asia, and establish here without the organisms that keep them in check in their home range,” said De Clerck-Floate, an expert in insects and biological control of weeds at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Lethbridge research station.

But the tricky bit is making sure that introduced insects, also known as agents, are truly host specific and won’t feed on or damage other plants they aren’t supposed to.

“Most of the testing occurs overseas, where the insects that you’re testing occur naturally. That way they can test them outdoors, as well as indoors in cages,” said De Clerck-Floate, adding she and fellow insect ecologist Rob Bourchier collaborate with a Swiss agency that has expertise in biocontrols.

They are able to do their own testing because they have a quarantine facility.

“It’s specifically designed to keep these insects that we work with indoors and under wraps so they don’t get loose in the environment before they are tested and petitioned for release,” she said.

Petitioning is part of the process that includes submitting a detailed report to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and a review by experts. If approval is given, the next step is helping the newcomers get established in their new homeland.

“Some of them don’t survive our winters well,” said De Clerck-Floate. “We also release them in different habitats and climatic areas. We get a good sense of where they’re going to establish, and what kind of impact they are going to have on the weed.”

Biological control is just one tool to handle weeds, along with herbicides.

“When you reach a point with the weed when you can’t contain it, or you can’t spray it because it is in a sensitive habitat, biological control is a potential tool — if we can find an agent that is really effective,” she said.

Currently, De Clerck-Floate is looking at agents for two types of toadflax (dalmatian and yellow).

“Both are a problem in rangelands, but yellow is also a problem in northern farmland in crops like alfalfa and even barley. It’s a problem in strawberries in Eastern Canada.”

Yellow toadflax grows in southern and central Alberta and around Edmonton.

Researchers (there are also American scientists working on biological controls) think they may have found a suitable agent for yellow toadflax. It’s a type of weevil that lays its eggs into the growing shoots of yellow toadflax, producing galls. The larvae sit in the gall, and all the nourishment comes to them, starving the plant.

Once again, it’s a case of getting the critters settled but the weevil is establishing well in cooler habitats.

“We have wonderful populations in the mountains. We released it in southeastern B.C. near Elkford, and it’s doing well in the Calgary area, near the foothills.”

De Clerck-Floate is also working on a new insect to combat oxeye daisy, a pasture invader from Europe that cattle won’t eat and can contaminate grass seeds like timothy or alfalfa.

“The agent that we’re petitioning is a moth whose larva feeds on the roots of the oxeye daisy,” said De Clerck-Floate. “Based on our testing, it’s pretty host specific, so it looks like a good agent, and it looks like it could be really effective.”

Common tansy is another big threat in parts of northern Alberta. Scientists are working to bring in a Russian weevil with larvae that feed on the stems of the common tansy.

However, with biocontrol, effective control doesn’t mean eliminating a weed.

That’s simply because it would be self-defeating if a type of agent killed off the weed that is its source of food.

“It’s like a predator/prey situation,” she said. “The predator is the biocontrol agent, and the prey is the weed. If you eliminate the weed, the insect doesn’t have enough food to feed on long term. Ideally, you want to take the weed below a damaging threshold. We try to reduce its number so it’s no longer a problem.”

Finding suitable biocontrol agents takes a lot of research and time, but provides control options that might not be possible otherwise, which is why the team is focused mainly on weeds that affect rangelands.

“Generally, it’s not cost effective for a farmer or rancher to be out there spraying all their weeds,” she said. “It’s costly in terms of the cost of the pesticide, but also the feasibility of getting out there and spraying. It’s damaging to the native forages, where they are grazing their cattle.”

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The intrepid scientist reaches his hand into the gut of a shark and pulls out what it had for dinner — a different fish or maybe, in the case of sharks, a tin can. He knows, just by examining those contents, what this predator likes to eat.

Only this is real life, and the scientist in this case is Boyd Mori. The predator whose dinner he wants to discover is a spider, not a shark. And the tools he’s using to reach into its belly are much more precise.

“We want to know which beneficials are the most beneficial, and by using this next-generation DNA sequencing approach, we can determine what a predator insect is feeding on,” said the University of Alberta researcher.

“We want to know what they’re eating and what impact they could be having on our pest populations. We assume they’re having an impact, but we don’t know for sure.”

In the past, research into beneficial insects — that is, ones that eat the pests that feed on crops — has mainly focused on specific predators or pests. Researchers might have looked at whether certain parasitoids were present in the field or if generalist predators like beetles were eating a certain pest.

“Before, we would design DNA primers that would help amplify the pest DNA within the beetle,” said Mori. “So if the predatory beetle had eaten the pest species and the DNA of the pest species was present, the primers would tell us that.”

But in this new research, which will kick off this summer, Mori’s team will be using next-generation DNA sequencing with universal primers to sift through the entire stomach contents of generalist predators such as beetles and spiders to discover their preferred entrées.

“We’re not specifically looking for one pest over another. We’re looking at every insect species that beetle has eaten.”

Using these universal primers gives the researchers more sequencing results than they would normally get with traditional approaches.

“By doing this with field-collected specimens, we don’t have any prior knowledge of what it could potentially be eating. This technique will allow us to identify the items it’s feeding on.”

And generalist predators like beetles and spiders are the primary focus of this research because of the “ecosystem services these insects provide,” Mori added.

And they’re present in almost every single field.

“If we can find a predator that has a specific affinity to feed on, say, wheat midge larvae, it will help us identify which predators have the most bang for their buck on the insect pests. Then we can start looking at some of our agronomic practices to see how they affect the predators.”

And that’s the ultimate goal of this research — to reduce reliance on insecticides by maintaining beneficial insect populations, he said.

“What can we do to increase these predator populations in the field? That’s what we’re hoping to learn — if we can identify which predators are the most beneficial, then in the future, what can we do to enhance those populations in the field?”

Beneficial insects are often wiped out alongside pests as a ‘non-target effect’ of a pesticide application. But increasing the level of beneficials in the field could reduce the need for pesticides in the first place — or at least that’s the hope.

“If we can really enhance our beneficial insects in our fields, there is the potential that they’d help to reduce our pest populations so we no longer have to apply external inputs. That’s the ultimate goal,” said Mori.

Farmers are already doing a lot of the right things to maintain beneficial insect populations, Mori added. This research will just give them another tool to tackle insect pests in their fields.

“A lot of best management practices have been designed around beneficial insects,” he said. “By using our economic thresholds and only applying insecticides when absolutely necessary, it really helps to conserve not only the predators and the parasitoids in the field but all the other species that could be enhancing the soil.

“Farmers are doing a good job of that. We just want to help them with this research to do even better.”

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One such report has been received from a location north of Edmonton, and more are likely.

This outbreak is similar to one in 2010 when large numbers of ground beetles were reported in several locations in the province, said Floate, a research scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada in Lethbridge.

Researchers concluded that unusually cool summer temperatures along with the late harvest in 2009 — also delayed by snow — likely left an abundance of canola seed on the soil. That abundant food supply allowed a larger-than-normal number of adults to survive and emerge in the spring of 2010. Those beetles then moved into surrounding fields in search of food. They found that the beetles’ numbers returned to normal levels in 2011.

“Given the large numbers of unharvested acres of canola last fall, I thought conditions might be ripe for such outbreaks this spring,” said Floate.

These beetles are not pest insects but rather beneficials, and farmers should not spray them, he said.

Adults feed on the seeds of weeds and other plants lying on the ground, and their larvae eat other insects including pest species. Eggs laid in the soil over the next few weeks will produce more adults later this summer and possibly more reports of outbreaks.

The beetles are black and six to nine millimetres in length.

Floate is looking for a few dozen beetles per location to determine species composition as well as the estimated number of acres affected, the cropping history of the field (going back at least two years), and an estimate of beetle numbers (such as high-resolution photos or a guesstimate of the number in a square metre). Floate can be reached at kevin.floate@canada.ca.

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The tweet, posted on Feb. 1, was about a project on beneficial insects in wetlands, shelterbelts, and other insect habitats.

The idea of the canola council and Ducks Unlimited Canada working together angered a number of grain farmers, mostly in Saskatchewan and Manitoba — several of whom threatened to start having their checkoff rebated.

The canola council has since removed the tweet and apologized.

“It wasn’t very clear communications and we apologized for that,” said council president Jim Everson. “It got a number of producers concerned about issues. We’ve heard these concerns being raised and so we will take the necessary time to review the concerns expressed and we’ll do it with our funding organizations and we’re doing that now. It started off with a message that was not clear.”

The tweet implied the project in question dealt with wetlands and carbon sequestration, when in fact, the project is about beneficial insects and non-crop areas, said Everson.

The beneficial insects project actually started in 2016, said pro­ject lead Paul Galpern, an associate professor in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Calgary.

The goal is to figure out how non-crop areas contribute to yield. There is some evidence that beneficial insects that live in headlands, shelterbelts and wetlands may offer a small yield benefit, he said.

“We’ve got an amazing diversity of insects in particular that live in these areas,” said Galpern. “We’re taking a number of approaches and the canola council has recently funded us to take a precision ag look at it.”

Galpern said he was sympathetic to the farmers who were concerned about the wetlands piece. Ducks Unlimited has provided $20,000 of in-kind contributions towards the project but it has no influence on the findings of the research and no producer funding is going to that organization.

“I am sympathetic to the farmers who have had bad experiences with wetland draining, but that’s not what the research is about,” he said. “We’re looking at wetlands because they are non-crop areas.”

And it’s worth knowing if a wetland area or shelterbelt might have a production benefit, he added.

“The idea is that these areas can provide habitat for insects,” said Galpern. “We’ve got evidence of that, and we’re now analyzing it.”

A ways away from the shelterbelts or wetlands, the researchers can see what Galpern calls “the halo effect.” Generally, there is a reduction in yield right next to the feature, and then a boost in yield.

The project brings up the importance of both agriculture and conservation, and how the two of them can work simultaneously together, he said.

“As a conservation biologist, I see that more than ever on the Prairies — this is a potential for agriculture that I call win win,” he said. “I really feel that in the 21st century, we have the technologies to evaluate nature’s contribution to people.

“This is a system where win wins are actually possible. We can continue and maximize food production while minimizing the impact. That’s what excites me about working with farmers. There is potential here.”

Throughout the project, Galpern has partnered with farmers, some of whom have put up exclosures to keep insects out of their fields, and see if it makes a difference to crop yields.

Other producers are sharing their precision yield data, so the researchers can examine patterns in the field. Two full-time researchers are looking at data involving remote sensing and precision yield. Producers from around Calgary, Lethbridge and Parkland County have participated in the project.

Galpern said that while the confusion around the controversial tweet was unfortunate, it has brought some attention to the project.

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The proud warriors are called stem gall flies and they’re available for sale.

“The gall flies act on a different portion of the Canada thistle than the weevils do,” said Rachael Nay, conservation agriculture and extension program co-ordinator with the West Central Forage Association.

The association has been selling Canada thistle stem-mining weevils for years — and has trouble meeting demand. Stem gall flies could be an attractive option for producers who are battling the invasive, and pernicious, weed.

The flies become adults in early June and lay eggs on the thistle in early summer. The larvae then develop and feed on the tissue of the plant and form a gall.

“The gall becomes a nutrient sink, directing nutrients away from the plant’s normal metabolic and reproductive functions,” the association notes on its website.

Forced to focus all its energy on the gall, the thistle stops reproducing properly. The flies overwinter in the gall as mature larvae and emerge as adults in spring.

It’s all very nasty for Canada thistle, but a boon for farmers suffering from infestations of the weed, which is a huge pest because it reproduces from both seed and rhizomes. Even an inch-long piece can send out new shoots.

“A density of 20 Canada thistle shoots per square metre can cause an estimated yield loss of four per cent in barley, 26 per cent in canola, 36 per cent in winter wheat and eight per cent in alfalfa seed,” said Nay. “Field infestations can reach 170 shoots per square metre.”

West Central Forage began selling stem gall flies in 2016, but doesn’t have a lot of data on how well they work.

“So far, on our test sites, we haven’t been able to see any galls forming, but we’ve had some producers say that they’ve seen lots of galls and had good success with them. We’re still learning as we go,” said Nay.

“I think people are also a bit worried because flies will pick up and take off from where they have been deposited. I can’t guarantee that they won’t do that. As long as they are deposited in an area with a lot of thistle, they should stay there, as they don’t have to look for a new food source.”

The gall flies are greenhouse raised, so their numbers are guaranteed.

“If you already have weevils out in an area, the stem flies work well because they both target different portions of the plant,” added Nay.

One tray costs $145 plus GST and can be ordered from Nay (at 780-727-4447 or conservationag@westcentralforage.com).

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