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Download PDF There’s a range of tactics currently under investigation to determine the best way to keep cabbage stem flea beetle from taking up residence in your crop of oilseed rape. CPM gathers the latest thinking. We have to get the crop established, but it also needs to be profitable. By Rob Jones For many growers, it was the 2018/19 season that showed them they were fighting a battle against cabbage stem flea beetle on two fronts – managing the pest relies on limiting larval damage as much as it does on surviving adult grazing. Many crops brought through the 2018 establishment storm last season looked good in December only to go backwards rapidly from January under serious larval burdens. As a result, large areas of OSR were either abandoned in the spring or taken through to a disappointing harvest; courses of action far more costly in wasted inputs than any autumn crop failure. At the same time, of course, where crops were written off in the spring, that significantly reduces opportunities for their profitable replacement. Just as with badly blackgrass-infested cereals, taking them through to harvest seriously increases future population pressures. “Quite understandably, much of the focus of CSFB…
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