SCOTT, Sask. – Owen Olfert pushes into the ground a stake capped with what appears to be a small, bright green plastic birdhouse.
But it’s really a trap for the orange wheat blossom midge, and the researcher at Agriculture Canada’s research centre in Saskatoon hopes it will replace the sweep net.
Olfert said he has known for years about the sweep net’s shortcomings.
Farmers now use it to sweep their fields in mid-evening, when the midge are most active. Farmers count the number of midge they catch to determine if spraying is warranted.
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“Too time consuming for already busy farmers,” Olfert said.
“Especially if you have a lot of land or it is spread out.”
He hopes his trap will change the way farmers monitor their midge. It uses sex pheromones recently developed at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia.
The pheromones lure the midge into the traps, which are mounted on crop-high stakes in the field.
Once inside the traps, the midge stick to adhesive.
The new traps will be tested on the Prairies during the coming crop year.
“We know the bait system works,” he said.
“Now we need to establish the relationship between the number of midge caught in the traps and the population in the field.”
He expects that the trap will be ready for sale to producers in the spring of 2003.
