Sask. flea beetle damage down from last year

May 27, 2020

As the first wave of flea beetles reach the end of their lifecycle, early reports show lower damage in Saskatchewan than last year

Staff Writer

Farms.com

Although the delayed start to the planting season caused headaches across Saskatchewan, the situation may have inadvertently offered a benefit: a decline in flea beetle pressure compared to 2019.

“There will be some regional hot spots … but, for the most part, I think flea beetle pressure should be on the decline,” said Dr. James Tansey, referencing early reports. He’s a provincial insect pest management specialist.

“The conventionalism is early seeding is a good strategy (to deal with flea beetles). If you get the seed in the ground and have it germinated before the flea beetles get to peak emergence, … (the crop) is pretty tolerant of damage,” Tansey said to Farms.com.

This year, however, a lot of producers were delayed in seeding since they had to harvest their 2019 crop first. As a result, they missed the beginning wave of flea beetles emerging – albeit in a different way than conventional wisdom dictates.

Canola producers must deal with flea beetles in different degrees each year, said Tansey.

“You can count on at least some growers getting some heavy damage. Flea beetles are a perennial problem everywhere; (this situation) is why all canola is treated with an insecticidal seed treatment,” said Tansey.

Since the first wave of flea beetles reach the end of their lifecycle by early or mid-June, a lot of producers are past the point of this cycle causing huge problems.

But canola producers should still watch for the diamond back moth, whose damage can look like flea beetle damage.

“We're seeing a relatively earlier migration of diamond back moth into this part of the world,” said Tansey. “We have pheromone traps throughout the province and we're catching them earlier and apparently in greater numbers than what we were seeing last year. … That's one (pest) that folks will want to keep an eye out for this year.”

Liudmyla Liudmyla/iStock/Getty Images Plus photo

Video: Wheat Yields in USA and China Threatened by Heat Waves Breaking Enzymes

A new peer reviewed study looks at the generally unrecognized risk of heat waves surpassing the threshold for enzyme damage in wheat.

Most studies that look at crop failure in the main food growing regions (breadbaskets of the planet) look at temperatures and droughts in the historical records to assess present day risk. Since the climate system has changed, these historical based risk analysis studies underestimate the present-day risks.

What this new research study does is generate an ensemble of plausible scenarios for the present climate in terms of temperatures and precipitation, and looks at how many of these plausible scenarios exceed the enzyme-breaking temperature of 32.8 C for wheat, and exceed the high stress yield reducing temperature of 27.8 C for wheat. Also, the study considers the possibility of a compounded failure with heat waves in both regions simultaneously, this greatly reducing global wheat supply and causing severe shortages.

Results show that the likelihood (risk) of wheat crop failure with a one-in-hundred likelihood in 1981 has in today’s climate become increased by 16x in the USA winter wheat crop (to one-in-six) and by 6x in northeast China (to one-in-sixteen).

The risks determined in this new paper are much greater than that obtained in previous work that determines risk by analyzing historical climate patterns.

Clearly, since the climate system is rapidly changing, we cannot assume stationarity and calculate risk probabilities like we did traditionally before.

We are essentially on a new planet, with a new climate regime, and have to understand that everything is different now.