BROOKS, Alta. — Prairie farmers intend to plant about 20 million acres of canola this year, so their insect forecast maps had better be up to the task.
Scott Meers, an insect management specialist with Alberta Agriculture, said trapping methods for bertha armyworm, which can be a major pest in canola crops, were developed in the 1970s and 1980s, when prairie canola production was in its infancy.
Now, through funding from the Canola Agronomic Research Program (CARP), Meers and his colleagues will examine trapping methods to check their accuracy in forecasting bertha armyworm numbers and outbreaks.
Read Also
Increasing farmland prices blamed on investors
a major tax and financial services firm says investors are driving up the value of farmland, preventing young farmers from entering the business. Robert Andjelic said that is bullshit.
“We are going to do trap studies probably east of Edmonton,” Meers said about the three-year project.
“We want to look at those warnings and see if they make sense.”
Trap counts lead to various levels of warning to growers about potential insect damage.
The major increase in canola acres also leads to questions about how many traps are needed to provide accurate predictions, said Meers. Researchers will consider how far they can extrapolate data from a single trap.
“We’ll see how the number of traps affect the forecast and the reality.”
In some townships, one in every three fields will be planted to canola this year. Meers said he wonders if more canola will dilute the number of moths caught in traps.
“It’s possible, but it’s also possible that we’ll just raise more bertha armyworm.”
Trends indicate bertha armyworm outbreaks are becoming less severe but more frequent. An outbreak every five to 10 years used to be the norm, but now they occur every two to three years.
Meers said the shorter duration could be the result of natural enemies, but there may be other factors as well.
The project will start this year because the Prairies have just been through a three-year lull in armyworm numbers. Meers said the 160 traps sites in Alberta last year showed an increase is starting to occur, so greater numbers of the worm are expected in 2012.
CARP, which is funding the study, is financed by canola grower organizations through the Canola Council of Canada.
