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COUNTRY LIFE IN BC • MARCH 2018


Collaboration ups ante in fight against wireworm Agassiz researchers study PEI fields to control click beetle larvae


by RONDA PAYNE ABBOTSFORD – Wireworms


are known for making potatoes unattractive and unmarketable in a hurry. They’re also the focus of Wim van Herk, a research assistant at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Agassiz Research and Development Centre. Van Herk is doing work in PEI to develop new methods for BC potato growers to control wireworm, the adolescent form of the click beetle.


Speaking at the Pacific


Agriculture Show in Abbotsford in January, van Herk said monitoring of wireworms and click beetles is essential to establishing control and forecasting potential crop damage. Because the larval stage


lasts four to five years, a slight


problem can become a complete crop loss without much warning. Monitoring can help catch early warning signs of impending disaster. “They live in fields of all


sorts and sizes. They differ in behaviours and pesticide susceptibility and they feed on a great variety of crops,” van Herk says. “Damage is done by feeding on the roots.” As van Herk explains, to get ahead of the click beetle and wireworm, scientists and farmers need to understand the pest’s biology, monitor, find a way to kill them and correlate the findings with the damage seen in the field.


A beetle’s life Adult click beetles


overwinter and lay eggs in the soil. When the eggs hatch, the larvae live four to five years in the soil before pupating and


transforming into adults that repeat the process. Typically, wireworm management targets the larval stage with pesticides or cultivating the soil to disrupt habitat and kill worms. This can also be done by allowing the field to flood or lay fallow. Adult beetles are controlled through pesticides or more recently, pheromone mass- trapping or biological disruption. These last two methods are being embraced in regions like PEI, where there are epidemic populations, or in areas where there aren’t enough chemical options or the crop chosen for rotation encourages population growth rather than diminishing it. Agassiz Research and


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Development Centre entomologist Bob Vernon, who supervised van Herk’s doctoral work on wireworms , developed an easy-to-install pheromone trap for under $2 that is rodent-proof. In 2015, these traps caught 900,000 beetles in just three fields. “It doesn’t take long to go check traps. Sixteen seconds,” van Herk says. “In the first year, we just had a few fields and put out a dense array of traps. The pheromone traps only get


Going for control Several products are showing promise for wireworm


control. The granular insecticides Thimet and Pyrifos can be applied at planting, for example. The in-furrow sprays Actara, Admire, Pyrinex and


Capture and seed-piece treatments (Titan, Actara and Admire) have also done well in trials. How the chemistries work together and their efficacy also bears further research. Some of the in-furrow sprays work best when applied at the bottom of the furrow, others on the bottom and sides; further work is required to determine where best to apply them. Thimet, Capture, Titan as well as Titan with Capture have yielded the best results to date in their various application methods, but are still being trialled. For those who don’t want to use pesticides, AAFC is


developing a guide to assess a field’s wireworm risk and control options using integrated pest management (IPM). —Ronda Payne


the males. They move in from the outer edges into the fields.” Trapping is most effective


in controlling beetle populations in early summer when the majority of adult beetles are on the site but before they lay their eggs (details vary between species). The pheromone traps confuse the males and prevent fertilization. Prior to trapping and monitoring in 18 fields in BC


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and PEI in 2016, van Herk notes there was an expectation that field headlands would have more beetles due to a lack of cultivation. This wasn’t the case. Traps placed in the middle of fields collected more beetles than those at the margins and headlands. Some fields also hosted hot spots. “If you could target those [hot spots], you could basically eliminate [the pest],” he says. However, rotation crops


make a significant difference. During the 2016 research, fields where cereals were a rotation crop in 2012 – within the four to five-year life span of the larvae – had more significant hot spots. Fields that hadn’t been planted to cereals had higher levels of click beetles in the headlands as originally suspected but not in the middle. “What you grow in rotation


is really going to make a difference to what comes out in your field,” van Herk says. With the positive results of using pheromone trapping, van Herk recommends setting up a “pheromone curtain” to draw all the male beetles in before the females lay eggs. “All the beetles that want to


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invade the field will be vacuumed up by this mass trapping,” he explains. Van Herk monitored 33 fields in 2017 and various sprays were tested for efficacy against click beetles. Matador was fairly successful, but it’s not yet registered for click beetles.


A number of other compounds are being tested in Agassiz, and the results are promising. As van Herk explains, the scientists want something that controls the pest and prevents damage. “There’s hope for the


future,” he says.


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