Wheat Blossom Midge: Check before you spray

UK - May 23, 2007

Growers and advisers must check fields for wheat blossom midge before spraying and must not adopt a spray everything approach warns leading crop adviser Sean Sparling.  

“Wheat blossom midge threaten yields, but often only affect one or two fields in an area, so farmers or their agronomists must do a thorough job of checking for the pest,” says Lincolnshire agronomist Sean Sparling. 

Mr Sparling places pheromone and sticky traps in client’s fields to help him check on midge population development. When he is inspecting fields he walks a W pattern carrying a sticky yellow trap. Mr Sparling also finds that spiders webs – which catch midges - can provide a useful alert. More broadly, the Dow AgroSciences Pestwatch reports are a helpful guide to when a threat is most imminent.   

“Last year we only needed treat 160 out of 8,000 acres, so this careful checking paid off. However, I am concerned that some advisers are not thorough enough when assessing midge levels, it is after all an easy option to spray the lot!” explains Mr Sparling.  

“When and if there is a problem, I will advise growers to use Dursban WG (chlorpyrifos) as it does a fantastic job,” adds Mr Sparling. “But I also encourage them to leave a 12m buffer zone around the field margin to allow natural predators to re-colonise the field.”