As field pea acreage has increased provincially, Manitoba Agriculture's provincial entomologist John Gavloski reminds growers new to the crop that they should be looking for pea aphids. Gavloski says producers should be scouting for pea aphids during the flowering to early podding stages.
"The aphid feeding doesn't do much at flowering stage, and it doesn't do too much once the pods are fully elongated," he says, "but when the pods are developing, if you have too many aphids clustered around the tip, they can compete with the sap getting to the developing pod, and that's when you can get problems.
Gavloski says pea aphid levels vary quite a bit from field to field, and recommends producers scout for the pest.
"We use a threshold of about two to three aphids per plant tip on average," he says. "So a technique we suggest, is in an area of the field, randomly select about ten plant tips, and examine them carefully for aphids or tap them over something to see if there's aphids."
Source : Portageonline