Recently in crop protection Category

I was out touring winter wheat fields around Watrous and Govan yesterday, calf-deep in muck and getting soaked in the never-ending rain. I saw a lot of sprayer tracks but not as many seeding tracks as I would have liked (and I'm sure farmers would like even more). There were pockets of crop growing or seeded and the winter wheat looks amazing - for now. All this water has got farmers talking about leaf disease and that horrible disease, fusarium head blight.

Farmers now have one more option to add to their tool box in the fight against leaf disease and FHB. BASF's Caramba fungicide received registration today and could make a lot of cereal growers very happy this year given the wet, wet, wet conditions farmers are facing. BASF says the product not only decreases the incidence of fusarium head blight, but it also decreases the resulting level of DON mycotoxin in cereals. The active ingredient, metconazole, controls major leaf diseases of wheat, oat and barley as well as fusarium, protecting yield and quality.

“Most fungicides control either fusarium or leaf diseases, this is the first product to provide a high level of both,” says Wayne Barton, marketing manager, fungicides, for BASF. Caramba is to be sprayed at flowering, a little later than some growers might be used to if they're typically going after leaf diseases. “It's a bit later than most growers are used to, and it's small application window,” Barton says. He says that if farmers plan to use Caramba, the narrow application window will require a little extra planning to ensure their application system (aerial or otherwise) is in place ahead of time.

Barton expects that most farmers will still choose to spray their wheat once, maybe twice. In that case, Caramba could become the first choice when fusarium head blight is the main concern, he says. “Most growers will choose one option: add a fungicide with their herbicide application early and control leaf disease; go in at the flag leaf stage and protect the flag and penultimate leaves with something like Headline; or choose Caramba and wait for flowering,” he says. Caramba does provide a high level of protection from leaf diseases when applied at heading, Barton adds, so it's not entirely an either/or scenario — it's simply a choice of controlling the biggest concern.

This year, it might be both.

There's a new pest in town. Well, "new" might be a bit of a stretch, however the incidence of striped flea beetle is on the rise. What makes the striped flea beetle an issue? As if chewing up your newly emerged canola wasn't enough, this pesky critter tends to emerge sooner, cause more damage AND be less affected by current seed treatments. It's not good news.

It's also not reason to panic, either. Troy Prosofsky, agronomy specialist with the Canola Council of Canada, says it's not that the striped flea beetle is suddenly swarming fields, however traps are showing higher numbers of this type of flea beetle. That's a bit disconcerting, and the provincial and federal entomologists as well as the Council need your help in keeping an eye out for these insects. (See photo below for distinguishing between species. The striped beetle is in the middle. Sorry the image is so stretched, I don't know why it did that.)



Flea beetles, regardless of species, overwinter in field margins, tree and fence lines and emerge early to feed. The chewing adults will chew on early weeds as they wait for the good stuff — canola — to emerge. While the flea beetle will feed for several weeks (into late June), the majority of the damage is done at the seeding to two leaf stage.

Because the beetles overwinter along field margins, crop rotations don't really help in controlling or avoiding an infestation. That said, Prosofsky says that if you notice large numbers in the fall when you're combining it's not a bad idea to try and seed canola far from that field. It's not always practical, however, which is where using a good seed treatment comes in handy, as does early scouting.

Once seedlings are up Prosofsky says daily scouting is a must. Start at the field edge and work your way in. The time to spray is at 25% damage to the leaves. By 50% damage, you've already lost yield. Remember, when it's warm, these insects move and eat quickly. Scouting daily in warm weather is a must.

Prosofsky adds that because flea beetles emerge before the crop, keeping fields clean of weeds and volunteers does deprive them of a food source. Researchers aren't sure why, but wider row spacing (eight inches or wider) does seem to hold the pest back somewhat. And, as always, a healthy, vigorous crop with adequate plants per square foot (or meter, if you're so inclined) is more likely to recover from early feeding damage.