A new mobile app in development at the University of Saskatchewan promises to identify field insects instantly, show local populations on a live map, and deliver management advice based on crop, region and weather.

Why it matters: Tracking pests and beneficial insects in real time could help farmers make quicker, better-informed pest management decisions and cut unnecessary pesticide use.

The app, called IPPM Now, is expected to combine artificial intelligence (AI), geospatial data and entomology expertise to turn a smartphone photo into real-time agronomic insight. Its developers say it recognizes both harmful and beneficial insects, from flea beetles and grasshoppers to pollinators and lady beetles, with more than 90 per cent accuracy.

Farmers could therefore learn not only what insect they’re dealing with, but whether pressure has reached economic thresholds and what conservation steps might protect beneficial species.

For developers, the goal is to pull together information that has long been scattered across research programs, scouting reports and grower experience.

“It will be super useful for farmers, agronomists and scientists scouting insect pests,” says project lead Teresa Aguiar, a PhD student at the University of Saskatchewan. “Scouting takes a lot of time, and the information from researchers, agronomists and farmers is often disconnected.”

From photo to field map

Each image submitted through the app is tagged to a rural municipality, not to an exact GPS point, to protect user privacy. Those records build a colour-coded map that shows where pests, pollinators and biocontrol insects are active. The development team plans to integrate local weather data so future versions can forecast outbreaks and pollinator activity.

“We want a practical tool that integrates insect identification, spatial reference, data collection and management recommendations in one platform to make decisions with all the variables involved in pest management,” Aguiar says.

Smart traps and sweep-net scouting

Alongside the app, Insect Track Solutions, the Saskatoon-based startup commercializing the project, is testing a smart trap that marries a sticky card with a small camera. Set in a field, the trap automatically photographs insects and uploads images to the same AI model used by the app, identifying and counting adult insects without anyone having to check the card manually.

Because sticky cards only capture flying adults, Aguiar’s team also designed a simple, low-tech workaround for ground or juvenile stages.

“To solve this problem, make a sweep and then put that sweep in a ziplock bag with a white background and take a picture of that ziplock bag using our mobile app,” she says. The model can then identify and count nymphs and instars in the sample, giving a fuller picture of population levels.

What it can do today

The prototype version already supports canola and wheat and recognizes 10 key insect groups common to the Prairies. Pests include lygus, flea beetles, grasshoppers and weevils; beneficials include lacewings, lady beetles, hoverflies, bumblebees and honeybees. The app draws on field data and photo libraries, including data and images supplied by Manitoba entomologist John Gavloski, to keep improving its accuracy toward species-level ID.

Future updates will broaden crop coverage and add weather and growth-stage links to help predict pest risk or pollinator timing.

Beta testers wanted

Before IPPM Now officially launches next spring, the developers are inviting farmers, agronomists and crop scouts to test the app this winter. Beta users will get early access, provide feedback on design and function, and can volunteer to host free smart-trap trials in 2025.

Aguiar says user input will guide the final version.

“We are sending beta testing invitations. If you’re interested, we can put the app in your phone, early access to give us feedback and help us to shape the app and get it ready for next season.”

Farmers and agronomists interested in early testing or hosting field validation sites can contact Insect Track Solutions Inc. via email.

The post USask-led startup testing AI insect management app for Prairie growers appeared first on Grainews.

Health Canada, in an email, said PMRA employees are coping with a large number of safety evaluations, thus delaying its decision on glufosinate.

“The target timeframes for post-market reviews typically vary between two to four years … depending on the complexity of the re-evaluation, availability of data, stakeholder engagement and other factors,” Health Canada said.

“However, like many other regulators (in other countries), PMRA is facing a backlog of post-market reviews.”

Agency experts began looking at the health and environmental safety of glufosinate-ammonium in 2018. It expects to complete the evaluation in 2027.

Liberty, which has glufosinate-ammonium as its active ingredient, is a popular herbicide on Canadian farms. It’s used to control weeds on fields seeded with BASF InVigor canola, hybrids that have tolerance to glufosinate. It’s also sprayed on weeds in other crops in Canada, the United States, South America and dozens of other countries.

The herbicide is not used in Europe, where the registration of glufosinate expired in 2018 and was not renewed. The European Union classified the herbicide as presumed toxic for human reproductivity.

BASF rejects that assessment, with its website saying it was based on lab studies where rats were exposed to “doses impossible under realistic and responsible conditions of use.”

“Glufosinate-ammonium has been used safely for 30 years… and to date, there are no known cases of harm to humans when applied according to labelled instructions.”

The PMRA launched its special review of glufosinate after France “prohibited all uses due to health reasons,” Health Canada said.

Meanwhile, the PMRA started a re-evaluation of glufosinate in 2019. Re-evaluations of pesticides happen every 15 years, which is required under the Pest Control Products Act.

The PMRA merged those efforts into one evaluation.

“There is a substantial amount of information to analyze as part of these reviews,” Health Canada said.

“Products containing glufosinate ammonium can continue to be used according to the current label directions during these evaluations.”

However, the PMRA will not permit new uses of glufosinate until the evaluation is complete.

As part of a plan to speed up reviews and decisions, the PMRA wants to focus its attention on pesticides that require more oversight.

“PMRA will continue to explore opportunities to streamline its processes and optimize resource allocation,” Health Canada said. “Thereby supporting industry competitiveness and reinforcing the PMRA’s ability to deliver on its core mandate over the long term.”

The post Ten years to study a pesticide? appeared first on Grainews.

The event brought together growers, livestock producers, researchers, policymakers, and industry partners in celebration of Ontario’s agri-food sector.

Jocelyn Smith, an assistant professor of field crop entomology at Guelph, shared ongoing challenges facing farmers as pest-resistant crops continue to emerge in Ontario.

“Pests keep changing, and new pests come into Ontario. We need to learn about them,” she said, adding that her department continues to develop monitoring programs to test and evaluate new pest control products.

She noted that there is also ongoing evaluation of old economic thresholds in an effort to develop more cost-effective treatment options.

As of 2006, she said that there has been an increase of insecticide-resistant corn, with the most common pest threat being the European corn borer.

She said that 85 per cent of corn grown in Ontario is genetically modified. As of 2018, she noted that there has been resistance discovered in Nova Scotia.

To help slow the spread of resistance, she added that her team is partnering with organizations across Canada and the United States to develop further prevention programs.

Maximizing Calf Health

Michael Steele, a professor with the department of animal biosciences, continued the discussion, sharing updates on his team’s research to enhance the quality of breeding calves in Ontario.

He noted that 40 per cent of calves in Ontario are crossbred beef animals, as producers are breeding more of their lower end dairy cows to beef cows.

He added that research is also being done to reduce the level of microbial use during the early stages of calving. Genetic markers are also being traced among bulls to select the best breeding options.

The next stage of research, he added, is post-weaning nutrition. He said many calves are given a high-starch diet and that new research will explore if this is an environmentally friendly and healthy option, versus other diet alternatives.

The overall objective is to develop a better understanding of how pre-weaning nutritional and management factors can impact gastrointestinal development and metabolism during the pre-weaning phase and later in life.

For more of our coverage of Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show 2025, visit the Farmtario landing page.

The post Improving calf health, fighting pesticide resistance highlighted at Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show appeared first on Grainews.

Locusts, which can destroy huge areas of crops in a matter of days, traditionally breed in secluded places along rivers or in uncultivated areas, and controlling that is almost impossible in regions neighbouring the frontline.

Why it matters: Locusts are destroying crops in Ukraine, a major global exporter of grain and oilseeds.

The situation is complicated by record high temperatures this summer, the inability to use aircraft for locust control and the absence of birds – locusts’ natural predators – which are avoiding the combat zone.

Local and government officials declined to provide data on the extent of the locust infestation or damage caused so far. Ukraine is the world’s largest sunflower oil exporter and before the war ranked fifth among wheat exporters.

Swarms of locusts are covering roads, fields and bushes in Zaporizhzhia region and farmers say the insects have destroyed up to a third of their sunflower crops.

“We saw a big swarm. And the next day the ‘infantry’ marched in. The small ones, they ate everything that was hanging low, they ate everything,” said Oleh Tolmatov, 46, a resident of Kushuhum village in Zaporizhzhia region.

Russia, which invaded Ukraine in 2022, has partially occupied the southern Ukrainian regions of Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv and Kherson, forcing farmers to abandon their fields.

Grains and oilseeds are traditional crops for these regions.

“The reason for all of this is high temperatures, the reason for all of this is abandoned land, the reason for all of this is the corresponding Russian aggression,” Vadym Chaikovskyi, Ukraine’s Chief Phytosanitary Inspector, told Reuters.

Denys Marchuk, deputy head of Ukraine’s largest farm producers’ union UAC, said that the destruction of the Kakhovka dam on the Dnipro River by Russian troops two years ago had created huge swampy areas where locusts are breeding.

Kyiv says that Russia blew up the Kakhovka dam in the summer of 2023, draining thousands of square kilometres of the former reservoir and leaving farms and Europe’s largest nuclear power plant without water.

— Reporting by Sergiy Chalyi

The post Locusts spread in Ukraine’s south as war disrupts control measures appeared first on Grainews.

The results from that research, led by Olds College research scientist Shabeg Briar, have been promising.

Nematodes are tiny roundworms that live in the soil and infect insects. Several species have shown high levels of pest control in lab tests.

A proven but underused tool

While they’re often seen as a crop pest, interest in using nematodes to control insect pests isn’t new. In the 1980s, Cornell University researcher Elson Shields began testing beneficial nematodes as a long-term control for alfalfa snout beetle, work that would eventually help establish him as a pioneer in the field.

But alfalfa snout beetle was a very localized problem, confined to a handful of counties in New York and Ontario. That limited the commercial appeal for widespread agricultural use and, for the most part, nematodes have remained niche tools, used mostly in greenhouses and by home gardeners.

“They are currently not available in the Canadian Prairies for larger-scale use on field crops,” Manitoba Agriculture entomologist John Gavloski says. Production and marketing could scale up, he adds, if nematodes proved effective against major field crop pests.

Research done in Ontario looking at using beneficial nematodes to treat corn rootworm had promising results, he says. With continued positive results from these kinds of studies, the technology could soon become a familiar tool in Prairie farmers’ integrated pest management toolbox.

Encouraging results from Alberta

The Alberta study tested four types of commercially available entomopathogenic nematodes (EPNs) at various concentrations to see which were most effective.

The nematodes stacked up well. Diamondback moth larvae showed up to 90 per cent mortality; lygus bugs, up to 87 per cent; and black cutworms were almost entirely wiped out. Cabbage root maggots were also effectively controlled, reaching 83 per cent mortality, but the pupae proved more difficult to kill. Unfortunately for canola growers, their No. 1 pest, the flea beetle, appeared largely unaffected, with only 10 per cent mortality.

Still, the overall results are encouraging. With insecticide resistance on the rise and fewer chemical options available, biological tools such as EPNs could offer Prairie growers an environmentally friendly way to target insects hiding below the surface. While this would clearly be beneficial for organic growers, Gavloski suggested it would appeal to conventional farmers as well.

From lab to farm

While EPNs have yet to become available to farmers on the Canadian Prairies, the technology is already being put to use in the United States, thanks in part to the same researcher who helped pioneer it.

Elson Shields and his son Keegan have launched a company, Persistent BioControl, that’s beginning to open commercial markets for beneficial nematodes in the U.S., starting with corn and alfalfa farmers in the northeast.

The Iowa-based company grew out of Elson Shields’ decades of research, which demonstrated nematodes could provide long-term, soil-dwelling control of certain insect pests. But translating that academic success into a field-ready product wasn’t easy.

When he was thinking about retiring, Keegan Shields told his father if he didn’t want to see the technology sit on the shelf and go to waste, they ought to create a commercial source so farmers could buy it.

“The next step was to take it out of the lab and create a viable commercial enterprise,” Keegan Shields says.

Persistent BioControl was launched in 2019. When Elson retired from Cornell in 2022, he shifted his focus from research to business, taking on the role of chief technology officer for the company. Keegan is CEO.

Unlike most nematode products on the market, typically used as short-lived biopesticides in greenhouses or gardens, the nematodes sold by Persistent BioControl are designed to remain in the soil for a decade or longer after a single application. That has made the product especially appealing to row crop and forage producers.

“Our angle, and what makes this work for corn and other row crops, is the fact you can apply this one time and it’s going to give you the benefit for at least a few decades,” Shields says.

So far, more than 100,000 acres across the U.S. have been treated using this approach, most of them in New York. The company also works with organic vegetable growers targeting wireworm in root crops such as sweet potatoes, radishes and turnips, where nematodes are applied ahead of crop rotation to prevent feeding damage.

Application doesn’t require any specialty equipment. The nematodes are either injected into centre pivot irrigation systems or applied through conventional ground sprayers. For spray rigs, the tank and lines must be flushed, and all screens and filters removed.

Long-term value

The company uses a mix of three nematode species, adjusting the blend and application rate based on region, crop and pest pressure. For corn rootworm, the full cost is around US$70 per acre — higher than the $30 to $40 typically spent on soil insecticides. But for many farmers, the long-term value is clear.

“I thought I was going to have to spend a lot of time explaining the multi-year payback,” Shields says. “But they all get it immediately. You can see them start doing the math in their head: If I can eliminate my soil insecticide, this is a two-year payback, and if it works for the next decade, I’m a whole lot of money ahead.”

While Persistent BioControl hasn’t yet entered the Canadian market at scale, Shields says they’ve begun working with organic growers in Ontario, first by overnight shipping small orders and more recently by setting up a broker-assisted process that allows customers to legally bring product across the border themselves. Since the nematodes are naturally occurring and non-invasive, they don’t raise regulatory red flags.

Scaling up

“This will be year six for us,” Shields said. “We’ve got a lot of demand, and now we’ve got the ability to produce for 100,000 acres a year. We’re just going through the struggles of scaling up — hiring people, building out the facility, et cetera.”

Shields wasn’t familiar with Briar’s research in Alberta but says he’s keen to see nematodes explored in crops such as canola. “I would imagine any kind of treatment in canola is going to be similar to corn.”

The post Using nematodes to control crop pests appeared first on Grainews.

That’s what a recent two-year study aimed to address, with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada researchers looking at practical ways to limit lygus damage in faba beans. They focused on the pest’s tendency to migrate into faba from other crops as they mature and dry down.

Lygus feed on a wide range of hosts and are drawn to plants with flowers and tender tissue. That makes flowering time critical. Unfortunately for faba beans, their pod fill stage often lines up with the drydown period in nearby crops, which draws in lygus bugs at the worst possible time.

Trap cropping

That’s where trap crops come in. The idea is simple: plant something even more attractive than faba beans along the field edge, draw lygus in and hit them with an insecticide before they move on.

Trap cropping isn’t a new concept. AAFC entomologist Héctor Cárcamo, who led the lygus bug study, points out it was common for farmers to use trap crops to control wheat stem sawfly before resistant, solid-stem wheat varieties became available.

“Farmers would plant things like oats along the borders and ditches,” he says.

Nowadays, trap crops are more common in regions with smaller fields, where farmers can afford to manage more complex systems. On the Prairies, where farms are large and time is tight, adding extra steps such as planting and managing a separate trap crop can be a tough sell.

Still, Cárcamo believes there’s untapped potential.

“There are opportunities we’re missing in terms of reducing insecticide costs and the environmental impacts of spraying,” he says.

There’s also the looming threat of resistance. Lygus has already shown signs of resistance to some pyrethroids like Matador in cotton in the U.S.

“We should be taking whatever steps we can to reduce repeated applications of the same insecticides,” says Cárcamo.

What they tested

The research team used both lab and field trials to test how lygus responds to different crops. In the lab, they offered bugs a choice between faba beans and five other species: flax, peas, canola, safflower and alfalfa.

While there were hints that lygus males caused more damage when canola was in the mix, nothing significantly outperformed faba beans in terms of attractiveness. Cárcamo isn’t surprised.

“You’re in a very artificial environment in the lab,” he says. “What you see there doesn’t always play out in the field.”

The real insights came from side-by-side field trials at Lethbridge and Vauxhall, Alta., where faba beans were grown next to each potential trap crop. Researchers monitored lygus numbers and necrotic seed damage in the faba plots and tested two different insecticides to see how spraying affected outcomes.

What they found

First off, not every crop worked equally well. Peas and flax had the lowest lygus numbers, meaning they were less attractive and offered little trap potential.

Canola, on the other hand, was a major lygus magnet. Unfortunately, the bugs didn’t stop there: they spilled into the faba plots and caused serious seed damage.

“It was very clear they love canola and all the brassicaceae crops,” says Cárcamo. “But the problem is they also like faba beans enough to cause damage.”

Canola attracts lygus effectively, but to work as a trap crop, it has to be paired with well-timed insecticide applications. Otherwise, the bugs may still reach the faba beans.

Safflower appears to hold lygus bugs for longer. In 2022, faba beans beside safflower had significantly less damage than those next to canola. This lines up with findings from cotton systems in other countries, where safflower has been used as an effective trap crop.

Sunflowers, tested in 2023, also attracted high lygus numbers. Damage in adjacent faba plots was still present, but researchers observed high levels of parasitism by beneficial wasps such as Peristenus. That opens the door to more integrated strategies.

“There’s potential to use crops like sunflowers not just to attract lygus, but to support natural enemies,” Cárcamo says.

For organic growers, especially, safflower could be a good candidate.

“That might be the crop where you can hope to retain the lygus bug the longest,” Cárcamo says. “They like it better than faba beans, so the damage should be less.”

He cautions that trap cropping alone won’t reduce lygus populations, but it may help delay damage long enough to make a difference.

In a situation like this, he adds, there’s a need to integrate trap crops with natural enemies such as parasitoid wasps that attack the baby lygus. And for non-organic farmers, if needed, he recommends using selective insecticides that are soft on the beneficial insects essential for faba seed set.

Role of insecticides

The insecticide trials also revealed key insights. In 2022, the team used Beleaf, a product with low impact on pollinators and beneficials. It didn’t significantly reduce damage.

In 2023, they switched to lambda-cyhalothrin, a more aggressive pyrethroid. That spray reduced both lygus numbers and seed damage, but with greater risk to non-target insects.

What’s next?

Cárcamo says this work is still in its early days. Larger-scale trials in commercial fields are needed to confirm which trap crops work best and how to fine-tune the approach.

One scenario he’d like to test involves planting strips of faba beans and peas side by side, with canola along the field edges to act as a trap. But he doesn’t recommend farmers try this before the idea has been tested more.

“I’d like to look into the possibility of doing an experiment with a farmer,” he says. “That way, we can try it at a smaller scale first and monitor before scaling up to a full field.”

This year, he’s shifting focus slightly to test similar ideas in lentils, which will involve more real-world testing, including trials in lentil fields and work on natural enemy populations.

“We’re now looking for lentil growers to participate,” he says. “We want to measure how many natural enemies are present in the field.”

He’s also exploring options that could prove helpful for organic growers. In the lab, his team is testing insect-killing fungi — known as entomopathogens — on alfalfa weevils. The fungi work, but they’re slow, often taking two weeks to kill the insect.

“So you’d need a crop with a long flowering period, like safflower, to hold the pests long enough for the fungus to do its job,” he explains.

For now, trap crops will likely remain a tough sell for Canadian farmers. But the research shows that with the right crop, timing and spray strategy, they might give farmers — organic or otherwise — another tool to manage this tricky pest.

The post Could trap crops help fend off lygus in faba beans? appeared first on Grainews.

At a forage workshop hosted by the Canadian Forage and Grassland Association at the University of Manitoba in March, Manitoba Agriculture entomologist John Gavloski highlighted several key insect pests that can affect forage production and shared strategies for managing them.

Grasshoppers

Grasshoppers are a common pest in Prairie fields. Canada is home to 129 species of grasshoppers, but very few of those cause crop damage. There are only four or five grasshopper species that are considered to be pests, and of those, three are responsible for most of the damage.

“The top three grasshoppers in our survey this year are two-striped, which has been our dominant species in recent years, followed by either clear-winged or migratory,” Gavloski says.

All three have a similar life cycle. They all overwinter as eggs, laid in clusters of 20 to 30. The individual eggs resemble grains of brown rice.

“If you can dig those up easily, then you know you’ve got a decent grasshopper egg population,” Gavloski warns.

—> MORE ON FORAGES: Managing diseases in alfalfa

The ideal time for control is when the grasshoppers’ wing buds become visible. At this stage, the hatch is likely complete.

“Try to figure out what those newly hatched populations are like,” he says. “That will help you with your decision-making later on.”

Farmers can also lean on provincial grasshopper risk maps. Each of the Prairie provinces puts out a risk map in the fall based on samples taken, usually in August. The maps can help estimate the next season’s egg-laying potential.

While these maps can help, Gavloski warns they’re estimates and don’t guarantee outcomes for the following season. Weather conditions after the surveys have been done can affect populations. A warm fall with a late frost can mean there is more development within the egg, and the hatch could come sooner. And while the eggs are waterproof, heavy rains after the hatch, when the young grasshoppers are small, lack fat reserves and need to feed, can lower survival rates.

“They’re more vulnerable when they’re really tiny,” Gavloski says. “They get disease, they get bloated and they can drown.”

—> MORE ON GRASSHOPPERS: Reduced-area pest spraying can still hit moving targets

Economic thresholds: Estimating whether grasshopper numbers have reached the economic threshold can be challenging.

Gavloski estimates grasshopper populations by walking 50 metres along a field edge or ditch, selecting five random one-metre square areas and counting the grasshoppers that jump as he approaches. He then disturbs the plants to check for remaining insects.

These counts provide an estimate of the grasshopper population. The process doesn’t give very accurate results, but can probably let you know if you’re near the threshold.

“Usually, you can get a ballpark range,” Gavloski says. “If you think it was somewhere around 12 to 15, that is good. You don’t have to know that it was actually 13.”

For forage crops, the economic threshold for grasshopper control is generally considered to be eight to 12 grasshoppers per square metre.

Control methods: Gavloski recommends using what is called the Reduced Area and Agent Treatments (RAATS), which involve treating alternating swaths of land. This method works because grasshoppers move from untreated areas to treated areas. Research done in Wisconsin has shown RAATS can provide very good control while using half the insecticide.

—> MORE ON FORAGES: Grow forages, starve weeds

“The results of the research showed they were getting 94 per cent control when they sprayed the whole rangeland, but they were able to get 81 per cent control by only doing half of the rangeland,” Gavloski says.

Insecticides such as Coragen (chlorantraniliprole) are commonly used to control grasshoppers. Coragen is effective, with relatively low toxicity to pollinators. Generic insecticide versions have made treatments more affordable.

Cutworms

Cutworms are a diverse group of pests in Canada. Gavloski spoke about three different categories of cutworms: climbing, surface-feeding and subterranean.

Climbing cutworms climb plants at night to feed, then retreat underground or under debris during the day. Unlike other cutworms, they don’t cut plants but leave feeding damage on leaves, which can be misleading when scouting. The dingy cutworm is the most common climber in Manitoba. It can be identified by small leaf-like markings on its body. To find them, dig around damaged plants.

Surface-feeding cutworms crawl along the ground and cut plant stems, leaving severed plants behind. If you see cut plants, dig around to find the caterpillars nearby. The redbacked cutworm is a common surface-feeding species. It is recognizable by two red lines running down its back.

Subterranean cutworms live and feed underground, making them difficult to detect and control. The glassy cutworm is an example of a subterranean feeder. It prefers grasses over broadleaf crops and is commonly found in forage and cereal crops.

Gavloski also pointed out that some infestations can appear in patches. The patchiness can depend on egg-laying patterns the previous season, but it can also depend on topography. In more rolling landscapes, the warmer, southern side of the slopes tends to attract the bugs.

Economic thresholds: Gavloski didn’t speak to economic thresholds in his presentation. Manitoba Agriculture’s website says economic thresholds haven’t been well researched for cutworms, but included some anecdotal thresholds for various crops.

For alfalfa (the only forage crop listed), the website suggests four to five larvae per square foot (30 cm) as a threshold. Otherwise, farmers can just make a judgement based on the level of plant injury. Visible, widespread damage that threatens plant stands would obviously signal the need for control.

Control methods: Management strategies depend on the species. Coragen Max is the only insecticide registered for cutworms in forages — and while Gavloski says more options are needed, the pesticide is effective.

“It is a very good product for cutworms, at least the ones that surface feed; it’s got residual, and it is basically harmless to bees and many beneficial insects.”

Since cutworms are most active at night, insecticides should be applied late in the afternoon or evening.

Unfortunately, the effectiveness of insecticides to control subterranean species is “hit-and-miss,” Gavloski says. “Because they’re not coming above the ground to feed, they can be a real nuisance to manage with insecticides.”

Targeted spraying of affected areas can be used in situations where an infestation is not widespread.

“If the problem is small — say, 10 or 20 acres have a lot and the rest of the fields aren’t bad — you can patch-spray for cutworms.”

Cereal armyworm

The pest Gavloski refers to here shouldn’t be confused with the better-known bertha armyworm, which is mostly a concern for canola growers. As the name suggests, cereal armyworms are more likely to be found in forage grasses than alfalfa stands. It is also known as true armyworm or simply as “armyworm.”

Adults don’t overwinter in Canada but migrate from southern areas, often carried by wind currents in spring and summer, and while they have a particular affinity for timothy, most forage grasses are excellent hosts for armyworms.

“When the adults arrive, they’re looking for a lush, dense grassy stand to lay their eggs into,” Gavloski says. “So a perennial grass is just ideal … that’s where the eggs often end up.”

However, if they defoliate enough in an area, they will start moving into other areas (these movements are why they’re called armyworms), and, while their preference is to feed on grasses, they may feed on broadleaf plants in lieu of a grass crop if that’s what’s available.

Armyworm larvae have distinct stripes, with a V-shaped marking on their heads. The colours can vary, but those striped patterns are usually visible. The adult moths are light brown with white dots on their wings. Armyworm larvae feed primarily on grasses and are often found in forage stands, especially in early spring.

When scouting for armyworm larvae, check multiple areas of the field, as populations can vary within a single field. Shake plants and inspect the soil for larvae, paying close attention to plant debris, soil clumps and cracks.

“During the day, they’re trying to hide, so they’re underneath the debris and may go into the cracks in the soil,” Gavloski says. “So you have to look in the cracks, peel away the debris and do your counts.”

In cereal and grass crops, begin scouting in late June and examine at least five areas, focusing on patches of lodged plants and grassy weed infestations. Fields or sections with significant bird activity should also be monitored, as birds often feed on armyworms. Additionally, check the backs of larvae for parasite eggs, which can indicate natural control.

Economic thresholds: The threshold for control varies by crop. For forage grasses, it’s generally five larvae per square foot (929 cm²). However, as mentioned, they love timothy. Instead of feeding on the leaves before moving on to the heads like they do with other grasses, with timothy, they attack the heads first. As a result, they may require intervention even if the threshold isn’t met.

“Sometimes, it will pay to control them at levels below a threshold, depending on where they’re feeding and how much damage they’re doing,” Gavloski says.

Control methods: Insecticide applications should be timed for the evening or late afternoon, as armyworms primarily feed at night.

As with cutworms, chlorantraniliprole is the only active ingredient registered for armyworms. The products Coragen Max, Coragen (the pre-Max version) and a new generic version called Shenzi are available for farmers to use.

Alfalfa weevil

As the name suggests, the alfalfa weevil is a major economic pest for alfalfa crops, but will also feed on other legumes such as clover, making it a major concern for many farmers growing forages.

Adults overwinter under plant debris and soil in and around alfalfa fields and emerge in spring, feeding on alfalfa leaves. Round, elongated holes in the leaves are an indication of adult alfalfa weevils feeding.

When females are ready to lay eggs, they chew a hole in the stem and deposit from one to 40 eggs. When they hatch, the larvae will feed upon the stem before moving to fresh buds and leaves. After the larval stage, they make silky cocoons that, if the infestation is widespread, can be visible as a white haze over the field.

“People often first notice this driving by their field and see the crop is looking kind of frosted,” Gavloski says. “If you see this, you’ve probably got lots of feeding, and you probably should have been in there earlier.”

As a general guideline, he recommends scouting for the bugs in early June and continuing weekly checks.

“They should be hatching out by then,” Gavloski says. “You should be on top of things before it gets too bad.”

Economic thresholds: Alfalfa weevils cause significant damage, particularly to young alfalfa crops. The general action threshold for larvae varies based on crop height. For hay crops under 30 cm, the threshold is one larva per stem. For crops between 30 and 40 cm, it’s two larvae per stem. If three larvae per stem are found, control measures are generally needed.

Control methods: For hay crops, cutting the plants early is the main strategy used to control the insects because the larvae will starve or desiccate after cutting. Several insecticides are available for use, but many only provide partial suppression.

“Our insecticides don’t always work well for alfalfa weevil,” Gavloski says.

Natural predators, such as parasitoid wasps (bathyplectes and oomyzus), can help control alfalfa weevil populations. These predators can sometimes reduce the need for chemical control.

Lygus bugs

Gavloski also touched on lygus bugs. They are primarily a concern for alfalfa seed producers rather than forage growers. Lygus bugs are sap-feeding insects that use their beaks, like mosquitoes, to inject enzymes into plant tissues and suck up the sap. They target nitrogen-rich growth, damaging buds, seeds and flowers.

While there are suggested economic thresholds for control of the bugs in seed alfalfa, and insecticides are available, control is not recommended for alfalfa grown for hay.

The post What insect pests are bugging your forage crops? appeared first on Grainews.

FieldWatch is a U.S.-based non-profit that runs DriftWatch, BeeCheck and FieldCheck — mapping tools designed to let farmers and pesticide applicators communicate about sensitive crop areas. Organic growers and beekeepers register locations voluntarily, and applicators check the maps before spraying.

It’s been available in Saskatchewan since 2012, and both Alberta and Manitoba launched the program this spring.

The expansion was funded by a mix of industry groups, including CropLife Canada, Manitoba Organics, the Manitoba Beekeepers Association, the Alberta Beekeepers Commission and Organic Alberta. To make it easier for both provinces to sign on, FieldWatch allowed Alberta and Manitoba to split the program’s $24,500 startup fee.

“Accidental spray incidents are surprisingly common and can have significant financial and mental health impacts on organic farmers,” says Tracey Smith of Organic Alberta. “If organic farmland is accidentally sprayed, the land loses organic status for three years.”

Marika Dewar-Norosky, executive director of Manitoba Organics, knows that reality firsthand. Her farm lost certification after being mistakenly sprayed.

“It wasn’t a matter of drift in that case; it was mixed coordinates,” Dewar-Norosky says. “They had the wrong land description.”

FieldWatch’s platforms integrate with GPS software already used by aerial applicators. They overlay sensitive sites, such as organic fields, directly onto the applicator’s screen.

“So it would show my farm in bright red to say, this is a sensitive area,” Dewar-Norosky says.

The program’s success will depend on the buy-in from applicators, but Dewar-Norosky is optimistic. When she was building support for the project, she called every commercial applicator in Manitoba. She said the responses were overwhelmingly positive. She was even able to secure a corporate sponsorship from Western Canadian Aerial, based at Franklin, Man. That sponsorship helped foot the bill for the initial startup cost.

“Everyone’s really excited to be involved. No one wants to spray a beehive or organic acres.”

The program is aimed at commercial applicators, which on the Prairies mostly means aerial spraying. “If you’re spraying your own field, you already know if your neighbours are organic,” Dewar-Norosky says.

Bob Walters, CEO of FieldWatch, says label requirements often dictate when and where applicators can spray. In some cases, labels even require checking a local registry for beehives or sensitive crops.

Applicators don’t need to be registered to use the maps; anyone can view them. Walters says that ease of access is intentional, to avoid creating bureaucratic hurdles.

“But beyond the legal side of it, most applicators really do care,” he says. “I’ve met very few, whether on the ground or in the air, who aren’t concerned about someone else’s livelihood. They want to do the right thing.”

Beekeeper reluctance

Connie Phillips, executive director of the Alberta Beekeepers Commission, says the risk of drift is well known among her members, especially those servicing hybrid canola seed fields in the province’s south.

“Every year since I’ve worked for the commission, it has been inevitable that bees and workers get sprayed by aerial sprayers. Not on purpose, of course,” Phillips says.

She said beekeepers want to see better co-ordination with sprayers, but concerns around revealing hive locations run deep. “It’s going to be slow. They don’t want others to know where their bees are.”

That reluctance is well known to Simon Lalonde, president of the Saskatchewan Beekeepers Development Corporation.

“You can zoom in and see exactly where all our bee yards are,” Lalonde says. “Some guys want to keep that private.”

The main concern is theft. But Lalonde says fears of theft are largely misplaced, citing just one example of hive theft in the last five years in Saskatchewan. That theft had nothing to do with FieldWatch; it turned out to be the beekeeper’s neighbour.

“The only person who steals a beehive is another beekeeper, and they already know where the yards are.”

Still, many beekeepers remain hesitant to join, and as a result, the Saskatchewan Beekeepers Development Corporation is seeing only 30-50 per cent uptake by beekeepers.

That low uptake is at least partially due to the government of Saskatchewan’s funding regulations. Unlike other provinces, where login-based privacy can be offered, Saskatchewan’s rules require the platform to be fully public. Lalonde believes that decision may have contributed to the slower uptake.

“If you give beekeepers a login and password and give applicators and sprayers their own login, then it would be better controlled. That might have convinced more people to sign up.”

Getting the word out

Walters grants that beekeepers’ reluctance to share their locations is a challenge across the entire network, but adds the painful truth is that secrecy increases the chance of being sprayed. However, the option to mark fields ‘private’ helps ease most of those concerns. In fact, Walters says, lack of awareness is probably a more significant barrier.

“No matter how hard we’ve tried and worked over the years — through the government, through the university, through associations — sometimes there’s just not an awareness that we even exist.”

Organizations in both Manitoba and Alberta are working to raise awareness, with outreach efforts ramping up now that the platform is officially live.

“Signing up is quick and easy if you have access to the internet,” Organic Alberta’s Smith says. “People without internet access can ask us for paper forms.”

Ultimately, the platform is about prevention, Walters says. Any time a chemical is sprayed, whether it’s in the backyard, or from a plane, that chemical can move.

“It’s that impact that we’re trying to minimize,” he says. “At the end of the day, it’s a communication tool — communicating what may be downwind or adjacent or nearby to where you’re spraying. It’s really an attempt to have people work together.”

The post Mapping tool to stop accidental spraying now available across Prairies appeared first on Grainews.

Farmers don’t get directly paid for this help, but being involved in the process to monitor crop diseases, weeds and insect pests becomes integral to the work of researchers producing accurate maps, pest-severity forecasts, and potential treatment and management options. The hope is that all this information comes together to help farmers to better protect their crops.

Farmers and landowners can help researchers in a couple of different ways, says Brent McCallum, a plant pathologist at the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) Research Centre at Morden, Man. He specializes in wheat leaf rust disease and chairs a relatively new initiative, the Prairie Biovigilance Network (see sidebar below).

Allow access

One important area where farmers can help is to allow access to their land, McCallum says. Farmers make it known through their agronomist, provincial ag rep or commodity organization that researchers and technicians can visit fields to check for pests, whether it be weeds, insects or diseases.

This doesn’t mean hordes of people will be trampling or driving over standing crops, he says. It usually involves one person walking into a field from the road, wearing phytosanitary boot covers and making a quick inspection on random fields. Whoever makes the inspection always calls and double-checks with the producer before they come.

Boots on the ground

The other important area where farmers can help is to provide researchers with information on what they see in the fields. Their reports on crop disease symptoms, new or suspicious weeds and insect activity all help to complete the crop pest severity picture.

“It is all totally voluntary,” says McCallum. “But farmers are the front-line people and as researchers we are always interested in what they are seeing in their fields.” They may be able to submit photos, collect and submit samples, or just provide a report on crops or a pest situation.

All information collected goes into a database to produce maps showing distribution of each crop pest, helps researchers determine the severity of a given pest, and contributes to recommendations on treatment or management of a particular disease, insect or weed.

Producers helping researchers isn’t a new idea by any means, McCallum says. Farmers, landowners and others from non-scientific communities have been providing feedback to agriculture researchers for more than 100 years.

Saskatchewan Agriculture, for example, has a long-running program where farmers can sign up to be Crop Reporters — essentially reporting on crop conditions. More recently the department created a service where farmers can sign up to help with pest monitoring. Farmers interested in making their fields available for monitoring in that province can get more information here.

“Farmer involvement continues to be important in helping to monitor and measure pest conditions, assess the risk and then develop recommendations for treatment and management,” says McCallum.

Voluntary and confidential

Some key points for producers interested in making their land or themselves available to collect information on crop pests:

• It is totally voluntary.
• If a farmer does make their fields available to random inspections, the researcher or technician making the inspection will call ahead of the visit to confirm.
• All information is totally confidential and farmer identity is protected. If there is a disease, insect or particular weed identified, it will be mapped or go into the database as being within a region or municipality with no connection to a particular farm.
• Often the researcher is able to provide the producer a confidential report of what they do find in the fields, for their own use.

“There are hundreds of farmers across Western Canada who open their fields and provide information to researchers, now,” McCallum says. “But in some respects it is getting more difficult to connect with producers.”

For example, “farmers get a bit leery in providing information to someone, concerned that down the road they may have to pay for some tool or service. And with an increase in rural crime in recent years, farmers are concerned about trespassers and who has access to their land, and there are also privacy concerns — who is going to see and how is this information to be used?”

McCallum emphasizes that visits to farm fields to assess crop pests are planned with minimal inconvenience to the producer and the producer’s right to privacy is well protected.

The information collected is valuable to the broader farming community in determining the degree of severity or risk of various pests, and is key for formulating management plans as needed, he says.

Connecting with researchers

So, how can producers connect with researchers within the Prairie Biovigilance Network? Here are three of the researchers with specialties in insect pests, weeds and crop diseases who welcome any and all producer co-operation:

Meghan Vankosky

Entomologist, AAFC Saskatoon

Researcher Meghan Vankosky, at AAFC’s Saskatoon Research and Development Centre, says having the co-operation of producers to be able to monitor fields for insect pests is essential to get a handle on pest distribution and severity.

Vankosky, co-chair of the Prairie Pest Monitoring Network, says over the past 10 years it has monitored 5,000 to 6,000 sites (fields) annually, collecting information on insects and other pests.

“With changes in provincial government trespass laws as well as changes in government policy it is becoming more difficult to access farm fields to conduct these surveys,” she says. “And every province is a bit different.

“When it comes to grasshopper surveys, for example, most of the time we conduct our sweeps in the ditches which gives us a pretty good idea of grasshopper numbers. However, for other pests we do need to check pea or canola fields, for example, and for that we need farmer permission.

“Once we have permission it is pretty straightforward; a survey only takes about five minutes. We walk into a field make our sweeps and then we are gone. But producers do need to provide permission.”

Vankosky’s research and field survey work aims to monitor seven key insect pests affecting western Canadian field crops: grasshoppers, wheat midge, wheat stem sawfly, diamondback moth, cabbage seed pod weevil, pea leaf weevil, and bertha armyworm.

Farmers willing to provide permission to have fields checked can contact Vankosky directly. They can also contact one of the provincial specialists, watch for notices on social media platforms, and in Saskatchewan can sign up online to provide pest monitoring permission. Here are those contact points:

• Prairie Pest Monitoring Network
• PPMN monitoring protocols
• Meghan Vankosky, AAFC Saskatoon
• Amanda Jorgensen, Alberta Agriculture and Irrigation
• Shelley Barkley, Alberta Agriculture and Irrigation
• James Tansey, Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture
• John Gavloski, Manitoba Agriculture
• Volunteer sign-up information on how to authorize access to your farmland in Saskatchewan
• The online form for the Saskatchewan program

Charles Geddes

Weed scientist, AAFC Lethbridge

Farmer involvement is also welcome as Charles Geddes, weed scientist at the Lethbridge Research and Development Centre, monitors the weed situation across Western Canada.

Geddes, who chairs the Prairie Weed Monitoring Network, encourages producers to make fields available for weed abundance surveys, which are conducted annually. He also urges farmers and agronomists to be vigilant, particularly following weed control measures, to identify plants that may be showing signs of herbicide resistance. Over the past four years the weed abundance survey has checked about 4,000 sites and another 1,600 sites have been monitored for herbicide resistance in weeds.

The weed abundance survey involves randomly selecting about 1,000 quarter sections of cropland per season across Western Canada that will be checked for weed types and population. For the herbicide resistance survey, about 200 quarter sections pre-harvest and 200 quarter sections post-harvest are checked to identify any signs of herbicide-resistant weeds.

“We select quarter sections at random and then approach the landowner for permission to check those fields to identify weed populations,” Geddes says. “It is totally voluntary and we are very respectful of producer wishes, but we’re hoping producers will allow our technicians access to survey the weed population.

“These surveys are an important part of identifying what weeds are out there and their density in any given area,” Geddes says. “That all contributes to the greater good of helping producers and the industry identify problems and management practices.”

Producer confidentiality is protected, so weed types and population data cannot be traced to any particular farm. A report on the results of a weed survey, however, will be given to the producer so they know what weeds have been identified on their land.

Along with research through the Biovigilance Network, Geddes, whose main research area is herbicide-resistant weeds, also has a couple of projects underway, relying on producer assistance, to help identify new cases of resistance.

“The first project relies on farmers and their agronomists to help identity potential cases of herbicide resistance that they see in their fields,” Geddes says. “After a burndown application, and particularly after an in-crop herbicide treatment, we are asking them to be watching while field scouting for any signs of weeds that haven’t been affected by the herbicide.”

The ideal time to do so is about three weeks after the herbicide application. “It is particularly telling if they observe weeds that have been controlled, as well as some that appear to unaffected. That is usually a good indicator of herbicide resistance.”

If herbicide resistance is suspected, Geddes encourages producers to contact him. He will send out an information kit, with the end goal of asking the producer to collect mature seeds from these unaffected plants and have those seeds submitted to Geddes for testing.

“If test results do identify herbicide resistance we can then work with that producer to develop a management plan to hopefully contain the issue before it becomes a bigger problem,” he says.

The second project related to identifying herbicide resistance in weeds, involves a new genetic test that can be made on plant tissue during the growing season, which can provide more timely results.

The testing technique, which looks for genetic markers — the genetic mechanism that confers herbicide resistance — has been proven, and Geddes is now working to identify labs across Western Canada that can provide the test. It’s hoped the test and a list of qualified labs will be available in coming months.

For background and reports from the Prairie Weed Monitoring Network, visit its website.

Kelly Turkington

Plant pathologist, AAFC Lacombe

The Prairie Crop Disease Monitoring Network (PCDMN) is being developed as a one-stop shopping site for everything producers need to know about identifying and managing cereal, oilseed and pulse crop diseases, says Kelly Turkington, a AAFC plant pathologist and chair of the PCDMN.

While the PCDMN has an excellent website launched in mid-2024, it also offers a crop disease reporting tool available for use on smartphones — first, to help farmers identify diseases in their crops, then if they so wish, with another click they can add that sighting to the larger disease map for the benefit of other producers and agronomists.

The Quick Disease Reporter Tool is available on an app. Farmers need to download the Survey 123 app (for Apple or Android) from ArcGIS, which builds interactive online maps. Next, scan a QR code for the reporter tool (it’s an app within an app).

The tool is designed to be used in the field, says Turkington, who is based at the Lacombe Research and Development Centre in central Alberta.

Once on the app, farmers looking at suspected disease symptoms can identify the crop type, suggest a specific disease, and take at least one digital picture of what they’re looking at. This can all be done without internet service.

When internet service is available, the app digitally tags the photo to the municipality, not the farmer’s field. The information is verified before a diagnosis and the municipality is added to an online map. Producers can submit the information anonymously or request a chat with a disease specialist.

“If producers chose to report a disease it doesn’t identify their farm, just the municipality, so producer confidentially is protected,” Turkington says.

“Our main message is to first of all let farmers know that the website for the disease monitoring network is available. It provides a great deal of information in terms of managing crop diseases.”

Launched in mid-2024, the PCDMN’s website provides information — text and photos — on disease identification, as well as disease risk assessment and best management practices for dealing with those diseases, Turkington says.

Key files include in-season updates, cereal rust risk, surveillance protocols and scouting tips. There’s also a free subscription option, which provides news and disease alerts directly to your email address.

Here are direct links to some of features on the PCDMN website:

• In-season updates
• PCDMN cereal rust risk reports
• Scouting protocols
• Scouting tips
• An in-season update for 2024 for the PCDMN Quick Disease Reporter Tool
• To subscribe

The scouting tips on the site include Disease Scouting Playing Cards — panels describing common cereal, oilseed and pulse crop diseases along with clear, colour photos depicting different stages of each disease.

MORE INFO: What’s the Prairie Biovigilance Network?

Brent McCallum, a researcher at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada at Morden, Man., is leading a diverse group of experts in plant pathology, entomology, weed science, economics and agronomy in creating a network to share knowledge about the range of pests affecting Western Canadian field crops.

This collaborative effort has been dubbed the Prairie Biovigilance Network, with the goal of helping researchers and farmers quickly and holistically minimize crop losses due to weeds, disease and insects.

It’s hoped the multidisciplinary approach will help everyone better understand new agricultural farming practices, new crops and the impact of climate change on plant health and combat the negative effects of newly introduced pests.

The PBN involves researchers working together but also relies heavily on input from producers.

“We want to raise awareness and get producers participating with us,” says McCallum. “We don’t just do this work in isolation, it’s something we need to do with the producers. They’re the ones who are on the front lines and generally the first to notice pests cropping up in their fields — their contributions to the network are crucial.”

According to AAFC, “biovigilance relies on a continuous cycle of awareness, identification, assessment, and understanding … to ensure that solving one problem doesn’t lead to another.”

“The idea of the network is to break down the silos of individual pest management programs and create an integrated, holistic and collaborative approach to managing pests,” McCallum says. Hopefully the new approach will help to mitigate potential threats from plant diseases, weed species and insects before they become much bigger, more costly problems.

With the co-operation of a multi-disciplinary team of AAFC research scientists, the focus is on improving co-ordination of pest surveillance programs in Western Canada, helping producers to respond quickly and efficiently to crop pests with reduced environmental impact and fewer unintended effects.

Within the overall structure of the Prairie Biovigilance Network, there are three other networks monitoring more specific crop pests. They include the Prairie Pest Monitoring Network (insects), the Prairie Weed Monitoring Network and the Prairie Crop Disease Monitoring Network.

Along with McCallum, researchers involved in the network include Vincent Hervet, an entomologist also at AAFC Morden, specializing in insect pests affecting stored crops; Meghan Vankosky, entomologist at AAFC Saskatoon, focusing on integrated pest management of pulse and oilseed insects; Charles Geddes, at AAFC Lethbridge, a researcher in weed ecology and cropping systems, specializing in herbicide resistant weeds; and Kelly Turkington, at AAFC Lacombe, a plant pathologist focusing on diseases in cereal and oilseed crops.

The post How farmers can help map, monitor and forecast pest outbreaks appeared first on Grainews.

Idaho potato farmer Blake Matthews caught the attention of Nature United with his crop-nutrition-first approach to pest management.

Matthews grows 3,000 acres of irrigated annual crops, including 400 to 500 acres of potatoes, the same in sugar beets, and the rest split among corn, barley and wheat. Over the past five-plus years, the farm applied one in-season fungicide to potatoes and only last year applied localized spray for insects — specifically, grasshoppers.

This minimal pesticide requirement may sound unbelievable, especially to other potato growers. “We do make some big claims,” Matthews says.

In addition to lowering pesticide use and synthetic fertilizer use, Matthews also says soil organic matter across the farm is in the three to four per cent range, up from a range from 0.7 to two before he put the focus on soil health and plant nutrition.

These numbers, in turn, caught the attention of Brad Johnson, Idaho agriculture strategy manager for Nature United (called The Nature Conservancy in the U.S.). Johnson says the non-government organization’s goal is to help modern agriculture become more sustainable. “We want to keep all tools, but seek judicious respectful use of pesticide products,” Johnson says.

Matthews Land and Cattle is one of Johnson’s demonstration farms.

Potatoes are an input-intensive crop, Johnson says. Potato crops often get soil fumigation for nematodes, along with fungicides and insecticides throughout the growing season. Matthews has all but eliminated these applications, Johnson says.

What’s more, Johnson adds, Matthews has also reduced tillage from four or five passes down to two passes, and reduced overall water use by 18 to 20 per cent.

Matthews “lets biology run the system,” Johnson says.

The core of the system is a soil health plan from long-time local agronomist Jared Cook. “Diseases and insects attack weak plants,” says Cook, agronomic specialist and sales consultant with Rocky Mountain Agronomics in Idaho. “And weakness is often related to nutrition.”

Cook has been working with Matthews and his family business, Matthews Land and Cattle, for 14 years. A key part of the soil health plan is manure compost from dairies and cattle feedlots, which improves organic matter and reduces the need for other fertilizer sources. Cook also prescribes two broad-spectrum hormones, which he won’t share because they are, he says, part of his competitive advantage.

For nutrients, Cook wants balance. He doesn’t want nitrogen availability to get ahead of the other nutrients. “In that situation, nitrogen robs yield,” he says. (Later in this article, Western Canadian crop nutrition experts comment that this can be true for potatoes and wheat, but perhaps not canola.)

“My game is to prioritize mineral nutrition, then use hormones to drive greater response,” Cook says.

The author told Cook during their interview that he usually looks at hormones and biologicals with a degree of skepticism. Cook supports that skepticism. “My approach has changed,” he says. “Ten years ago we didn’t have as many players in this space and I had almost complete trust. Now growers need a trusted advisory team.”

Cook emphasizes his methodical approach to nutrient decisions for all crops, using weekly and biweekly plant sap analysis of new and old leaves in combination with rapid soil testing. For Matthews, his in-season top-ups run through the irrigation system while watering.

With traditional tissue tests taken from new growth only, “you actually never know where the nutrient is coming from,” Cook says. “It could and should be from roots like normal or it could be from old leaves, where mobile nutrients are leaving the old growth to support new growth. We know yield is optimized when you can hold the plants’ old growth and new growth leaf nutrient density to a tight tolerance between them.”

Without accurate diagnosis, input use is “a guessing game and we just don’t need to be guessing,” Cook says. “These new advances in plant testing methods give us the edge in making the right decisions.”

Of course the final question is: does this intense level of management pay?

“We haven’t seen anything really for a yield change. We have, however, seen our quality go up in many different aspects,” Matthews says. “As far as the spend goes, for the most part, we’ve just traded dollars. We’ve replaced fertility with the compost, and replaced fungicides, insecticides and fumigants with nutritionals and biologicals. Overall, though, we probably save about $100 per acre from what our old program used to be.”

Reaching out to Prairie expertise

For many farms, ideal fertilizer management is simple: use soil tests to identify the right rate based on the farm’s yield target. Then choose nutrient sources that meet crop needs at the lowest cost and the greatest logistical efficiency. Manure can be a great nutrient source and organic matter booster when available and when applied based on nutrient analysis.

With these basics established, farms could dig deeper — in the way Matthews has — and hire an experienced agronomist to develop a more comprehensive plan.

Jared Cook outlines the four practices at the heart of his program:

• Balanced nutrition can make plants more resilient to insects and disease, and reduce the need for fungicides and insecticides.
• If farms put the primary focus on higher nitrogen rates, that extra nitrogen — when other nutrients are out of balance — can actually rob yields.
• Plants with correct nutrition have higher sugars (brix) and more secondary metabolites – compounds plants use to defend themselves.
• There are 16 essential elements, each with a specific mode of action. We need to pay closer attention to micros.

Do those four practices work for the common crops and farm systems in Western Canada? We polled western Canadian specialists — crop nutrition researchers, experienced agronomists and plant physiologists — to see what they thought of Cook’s four practices.

Balanced nutrition can make plants more resilient to insects and disease, and reduce the need for fungicides and insecticides. Is this true?

“It’s true, a crop with balanced nutrients can better tackle diseases and insects,” says Raju Soolanayakanahally, a plant physiologist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada in Saskatoon. “Balanced nutrients permit vigorous growth, thus providing active immunity as a result of increase phytonutrient, protein and lipid synthesis. Apart, photosynthesis will operate at its peak under balanced nutrition and adequate soil moisture. So if pests attack the plant, the plant can divert resources to tackle biotic stress without compromising yields.”

In general, experts agree healthy plants will be hardier plants. However, that does not mean healthy plants are immune to disease.

“Higher fertility leads to more vegetative growth, and lush canopies create a microclimate conducive for higher disease severity,” says Mike Harding, crop assurance lead for Alberta Agriculture and Irrigation. “In many cases the conditions for maximum plant growth are also the conditions for maximum disease potential.”

Chris Manchur, agronomy specialist with the Canola Council of Canada, adds, “We all know sclerotinia risk is higher in high-fertility environments.”

Jason Voogt says crop resilience to disease or insect pressure has “more to do with genetics.” The owner and lead agronomist with Field 2 Field Agronomy at Miami, Man. gives an example: “We had 200-bu./ac. oat crops in 2024. I would say those oats didn’t lack anything, yet we would have had major losses to crown rust had we not sprayed a fungicide this year.”

Ross McKenzie, retired agronomy research scientist with Alberta Agriculture, agrees nutrition is one path but not the only path to hardier plants. “A number of good agronomic factors, including soil fertility and fertilizer management, increase crop health, improve yield potential and help to reduce the impacts of diseases and/or insect pressure,” he says. “Probably the most notable is earlier seeding and slightly higher seeding rates.”

Lyle Cowell, Nutrien senior agronomist based at Tisdale, Sask., can cite many studies showing how specific nutrient deficiencies can increase specific diseases in specific crops. For example, “early examples showed that phosphorus deficiency leads to increased seedling rot due to pythium,” he says, citing a 1935 journal article by T.C. Vanterpool in the Canadian Journal of Research.

However, adding a nutrient to a crop that is not deficient will not “cure” a disease, he says. “For example it has often been suggested that copper will reduce ergot in wheat, but this is only true if the wheat is deficient in copper.”

If farms put the primary focus on higher nitrogen rates, that extra nitrogen — when other nutrients are out of balance — can actually rob yields. Is this true?

“I do not believe this for canola,” says Mario Tenuta, research chair in 4R Nutrient Stewardship at the University of Manitoba. He does believe it for other crops, giving two examples: wheat can lodge with excess nitrogen, and potatoes can have excess vine growth — two things that could, in theory, increase disease.

“I don’t believe this, except in the extreme, like where nitrogen levels become so high that they are toxic,” says Harding. “Studies I’m familiar with show that excess nitrogen is not advantageous or detrimental to yield. I do believe that excess nitrogen is a waste of money, so it will rob profit, but not yield. It is also possible that the lack of other nutrients may rob yield, but excess nitrogen will not.”

Others, including Cindy Grant, were believers. A retired research scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada at Brandon, Man., Grant says yield can decrease if growers add excess nitrogen without a balanced supply of other nutrients.

“Years ago, when I was a student and before it was widely recognized that our soils would be deficient in sulphur for canola, my husband-to-be had severe sulphur deficiency on his canola field,” Grant says. “It ended up getting every disease you could think of because the deficiency weakened it. I had one trial where every treatment that I used to improve nitrogen efficiency decreased canola yield because of an nitrogen:sulphur imbalance.”

Plants with correct nutrition have higher sugars (brix) and more secondary metabolites — compounds plants use to defend themselves. Is this true?

This one left most of our experts scratching, especially with regard to brix — a measure of plant sugars often used to assess grape sugar content when making wine. Higher brix means potentially higher alcohol content in the wine.

Cowell says brix is becoming a bit of a hot topic. “I have oddly been asked about brix many times this winter,” he says, “and my reply has been the same. If you grow wine and want to harvest for best sugar content, then brix is a tool to use. Otherwise, where is the data?”

Tenuta has a similar thought: “If brix was so useful, we’d be all be using it like a soil test.” He did, however, agree that good plant nutrition can lead to secondary metabolites useful in plant defence.

Xiaopeng Gao, associate professor of soil fertility and agronomy at the University of Manitoba, says “proper nutrient supply can improve plants’ photosynthesis efficiency, producing more sugars and secondary metabolites such as flavonoids, alkaloids and phenols. These compounds can help plants against attacks from pathogens and pests. Additionally, some compounds such as flavonoids can improve plants’ antioxidant properties, and therefore increase tolerance to abiotic stresses such as heat and drought.”

Soolanayakanahally agrees. “Higher secondary metabolites can impart better defence against pest and disease.”

There are 16 essential elements, each with a specific mode of action. We need to pay closer attention to micros. Is this true?

The experts generally agreed with this.

“I believe there is a growing need to pay attention to micros across Prairies,” Gao says. His reasons: one, canola, soybeans and corn have high requirements for micros and their acres, in total, are increasing. Two, fewer mixed farms mean lower use of livestock manure. And three, we are paying more attention to the importance of micros (for examples, iron and zinc) for human health.

Cowell says pay closer attention to micronutrients only if you need them. “The idea that micronutrient deficiencies are ‘hidden’ is a fallacy — these deficiencies tend to lead to yields falling off a cliff,” he says. He sees zinc applied to soils with no need for extra zinc and while he has seen boron deficiencies, it was “only on terrible soils that no one should farm.” Cowell’s conclusion: “Beyond that, this becomes a wasteland of marketing and improper sales.”

MORE ON MICROS: Soil fertility, revisited

Harding says manganese and zinc are “often heralded as having disease-reducing properties.” He also says boron availability is connected with clubroot infection in canola, and chloride deficiency can “predispose some crops to certain infections or physiological issues” — but again, only if they’re short.

Harding puts this whole conversation in perspective: while macronutrient and micronutrient fertility is a “critical agronomic principle necessary to allow the crop to reach its genetic potential, it is probably only occasionally a significant modulator of disease,” he says. “It is never as impactful as primary disease management principles like genetic resistance, crop rotation, clean seed and fungicides.”

The take-away

How do farmers use this information?

We interviewed a venture capital investor recently who encourages Canadian agriculture to at least pay attention to those voices at the fringe of common practice. Those may be the people who bring forth revolutionary ideas to make farming more efficient, more productive and more profitable.

In many cases, though, farms can advance all three of these by exploring the practices we already know.

Whether leaning into what we know or exploring the new and untested, it helps to have help. Get sound advice from an experienced agronomist. And listen to that little voice in your ahead that wonders, ‘Can this be right?’

“As we’ve gone down this road, the No. 1 skeptic has been my dad,” Matthews says.

What the family discovered together is that “the old days of strictly managing nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium are gone,” Matthews says. And from that point, their work with Cook has shown “plants in balance will have lower pest management costs.”

While we do not have much crop data to support this claim on the Prairies, the logic in those two broad statements is sound — as our experts have shown. How farmers achieve that “balance” is still open to debate. But if we are to make the efficiency gains we need to make, these are discoveries worth making.

The post FEED ME: Can well-fed plants fend off diseases and insects? appeared first on Grainews.