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Wheat midge warning issued after ‘huge’ outbreak hammers the Peace Although they only arrived in the Peace three years ago, the tiny bugs caused more than $1 million in damage and are showing up in fields across the province BY ALEXIS KIENLEN AND GLENN CHEATER AF STAFF
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roducers across Alberta are being urged to check their grade samples and be on the lookout for wheat midge. The tiny bugs don’t usually cause huge yield losses, but some producers in the Peace Country and the southwest corner of Alberta were hammered in 2013 both on yield and grade losses. Damage in the Peace alone is estimated to have topped $1 million and in at least one case, cut yields by an estimated 50 per cent. Those two areas are rated as hot spots for 2014, but farmers virtually everywhere need to be on guard, said Scott Meers, insect management specialist with Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development. “The risk in most of the province is fairly low, but there are individual fields almost throughout the entire province that are at risk,” said Meers. Any area where wheat midge scouting found more than 600 bugs is classed as a moderately high to high-risk area. But being in the ‘green’ zone isn’t a guarantee of safety, he said. “If you’re getting midge grading reports — even if it’s not affecting your grade, but being mentioned
Graders can easily distinguish between a healthy kernel of wheat and one that has been damaged by midge. PHOTO: COURTESY OF CANADIAN GRAIN COMMISSION
ber about wheat midge is that it is an introduced pest, so it is not native to the Canadian Prairies. This is not a cycle — it seems to be a new distribution on the Prairies, which is why it reached such huge densities in some of these fields.”
Worst-hit areas
— you should be looking at management options,” said Meers. “If it’s at the point where it’s affecting your grade, you should be considering midge-tolerant wheat. If it’s there but low, then I would do things like increasing seeding rate, seeding earlier, and putting together a proper scouting plan so you don’t get caught by a high level the next year.” ‘Caught’ is a good word to
describe what happened in the Peace in 2013. “To some degree, it was a bit of a surprise because when we did the fall soil sampling the previous year, we weren’t able to detect very high densities,” said Jennifer Otani, pest management biologist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. Although common in Saskatchewan, Alberta has largely escaped
the scourge of midge. It lays eggs in the wheat head, which results in the larvae feeding on wheat kernels. Wheat midge — which are bright orange, about half the size of a mosquito, and have three pairs of legs — were only found in the Peace in the fall of 2011, said Otani. “From that point on, we’ve seen the population increase,” she said. “The important thing to remem-
Smoky River and Falher were worst hit. The outbreak prompted the Smoky Applied Research and Demonstration Association to put on three midge information seminars last month. Weather played a major role as heavy rain delayed crop emergence in 2013, said Mike Dolinski, one of the speakers at the seminars. “Because the crop was delayed, it was in synchrony with when the
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