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Download PDF With more and more OSR crops falling victim to the adults or larvae of this voracious pest, is there a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel? CPM catches up with the research to date. There’s no huge benefit in increasing the seed rate. By Lucy de la Pasture Scientists have been frantically playing catch-up with cabbage stem flea beetle (CSFB) as they seek to find cultural methods to curb their activity. The process has moved from finding agronomic factors that influence CSFB numbers to small plot trials and ultimately testing possible IPM strategies in the field. ADAS senior research entomologist Dr Sacha White has been spearheading the effort to find ways of keeping OSR as a staple in the rotation. “There was already a huge data set available on CSFB from around 1500 sites. We began by reviewing it all and carrying out a modelling analysis to help pinpoint the agronomic factors that affect the severity of CSFB attack so we could narrow it down to the ones with the biggest influence,” he explains. Sacha’s team identified the majority of the key factors are weather-related, which he says is unsurprising for an insect where temperature…
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