Despite spring warnings of rising wheat midge populations, growers seem to have been caught off guard by the resurgence of a forgotten foe.
“Midge is definitely one of the main degrading factors that we’re seeing this year,” said Norm Woodbeck, manager of quality assurance standards and reinspection at the Canadian Grain Commission.
After processing about 2,000 harvest survey samples of red spring wheat, it is apparent that about 25 percent of the crop will be downgraded to No. 2 and approximately half of that is due to wheat midge damage.
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Another seven to eight percent of the crop will be bumped down two grades to No. 3, again about half of which is due to midge.
For Brian Moriarty, a wheat grower from Kamsack, Sask., that means a financial hit of 11 cents per bushel for No. 2 and and 52 cents per bushel for No. 3 wheat, according to the Canadian Wheat Board’s latest Pool Return Outlook.
“Our No. 1 wheat is being downgraded to a No. 2 and a No. 3 in some cases because of the damage caused by the wheat midge,” said Moriarty, who along with his father seeded about 500 acres of wheat this year.
They scoured their fields for midge at the flowering stage but didn’t find a large enough infestation to worry about, opting to spend their spraying budget on canola instead.
“Now we’re finding out there was a major problem with wheat midge,” said Moriarty.
Wes Woods, Saskatchewan representative for
SeCan, Canada’s largest supplier of certified seed, said some farmers were fooled by the pest, which doesn’t come out until late at night when it is cold.
“There was some areas where people should have sprayed and they didn’t,” Woods said. “People just weren’t on top of it enough and we are paying for it in grade loss.”
Woodbeck said midge damage is showing up in samples from all three prairie provinces but it is most prevalent in Saskatchewan grain.
“We haven’t seen it for many, many years at this level. Beautiful, pristine wheat affected with midge,” he said.
The pest is also affecting durum where about 10 percent of the crop downgraded to No. 2 has severe midge.
Normal damage is compounded by black mould growth.
Grain commission research scientist Jim Dexter said severe midge causes big problems for pasta manufacturers.
“The kernels become rotten and have a really pronounced effect on (pasta) speckiness.”
Midge damage on red spring wheat causes similar headaches for the baking industry. It reduces dough strength, especially for products requiring long baking times.
When the midge larvae feed, they inject an enzyme into the kernel to break down the protein in the wheat and that enzyme remains dormant until the baking process.
“As soon as you wet the flour this enzyme starts to chew up the protein,” said Dexter.
Complaints from the baking industry led to a tightening of the CGC’s midge damage tolerance levels on No. 2 and No. 3 wheat a few years ago.
That’s why growers in high risk areas need to be vigilant in monitoring their wheat fields, said Saskatchewan Agriculture insect specialist Scott Hartley.
His department released a wheat midge forecast this spring warning producers that populations were back at levels to be of “significant risk” to wheat crops.
But Hartley said it is clear from questions he has received that producers have forgotten how to properly manage the pest because it has not been a significant problem since the 1990s.
One thing that needs to be cleared up is that the crop is susceptible from the minute the wheat head becomes visible to the beginning of the flowering stage. Chemical treatment after that point is not cost effective.
“It’s more revenge spraying,” said Hartley.
Saskatchewan Agriculture has contracted a consultant to do another survey this fall. Those results should be ready by Crop Production Week in January but Hartley said common sense would indicate that if midge damage is showing up in wheat samples, the insects likely survived to become cocoons in the soil.
“It’s a pretty good bet that it’s still one (pest) that is still on the increase, but the map will give us a more concrete idea,” he said.
Farmers in high infestation areas might want to consider growing an alternative crop in 2007 or incorporating spraying costs into their budgets.
Woodbeck said on the bright side there was virtually no fusarium, frost or sprouting damage in 2006 and 68 percent of the red spring wheat crop graded No. 1.
“Visually it’s an exceptional crop.”
