Wireworm In Potatoes

[Northantsplants]

I have been working with pheromone traps for 4 years now and we have about 30 sites round the UK where we are looking at adult activity. We in the Fera Enigma project are mainly looking at when they become active and the species present, from Aberdeen to Kent and so on. The species mix of Agriotes is expected to differ from North-South and East to West but I havent seen all the data yet. I know that historically sputator are not common in the North and from what we see in traps along the East over recent years they are dominant here.
You will have no success using pheromone traps to catch all the adults, and even if it did work, it would cost a fortune.
Re soil pH, yep we do see damage in high pH and cereals can be damaged more in chalky soils than clay but the soil texture is most likely a bigger factor.
The most critical factor in population survival is the need for the critical life stages to be supported. these are egg laying, hatch and juvenile survival.
My work has shown how we can predict adult activity pretty well now, certainly where I am and see what we can do to limit them.
Disruption of egg hatch is possible in certain crop situations
Juvenile survival, + disruption of any pupation or freshly pupated adults is best done with discs after a straw crop is harvested and straw cleared if no chopped.
Buckwheat in cover crops is supposed to reduce survival of the younger stages in particular, must be common buckwheat as far as we know.
If you leave cereal stubbles weedy every autumn, you may as well have grass in the field.

Would be interested to see work on radish as a trap crop, not quite sure what you mean by trapping them?
Biofumigation may kill juveniles.

There is an event on 26th September in Shropshire where this kind of work will be discussed.

Wireworm in potatoes field lab workshop and farm walk

Join us for a workshop and farm walk in Shropshire on wireworm in potatoes - management, identification and the latest field lab trials.

www.eventbrite.co.uk

The best way to reduce damage in potatoes is to have them all cleared by now, and processing tolerances are better.

As far as the story on glycoalkaloids and susceptibility?
My answer is that they seemed to like Innovator in a trial last year and Canadian work indicated that some time ago.

It is not just a UK problem
There will be 7 presentations at the EAPR conference in Arras in early Sept, there will be a presentation from the UK on recent development work, all of which is post AHDB potatoes and with minimal funding.
I self-fund all my own work but Enigma has industry funding and we also get support from Cupgra and Innovative Farmers.

Would be interested to see work on radish as a trap crop, not quite sure what you mean by trapping them?

Trap crops draw pests away from the main crop. Or they can sometimes be used to disrupt lifecycles.
An example is here:

Preliminary investigations into the use of trap crops to control Agriotes spp. (Coleoptera: Elateridae) in potato crops - Journal of Pest Science

A field trial was conducted to investigate the use of peas (Pisum sativum cv. Valverde), wheat (Triticum aestivum cv. Capo) and oilseed radish (Raphanus sativus var. oleiformis cv. Adagio) as trap crops to control wireworm in potato fields. We investigated the efficacy of trap crops and distance...

link.springer.com

 

[Skater]

How is it looking this year?
Do you monitor with buried traps?

We are doing a massive amount of work with bait traps now.
Wheat + Maize is the best combination
Soil must be above 8C, not saturated and relatively free of competing Co2 sources

Identification of what you find is critical. Lots of critters look like wireworms to some people and not all species of wireworms will damage crops

 

[Skater]

Trap crops draw pests away from the main crop. Or they can sometimes be used to disrupt lifecycles.
An example is here:

Preliminary investigations into the use of trap crops to control Agriotes spp. (Coleoptera: Elateridae) in potato crops - Journal of Pest Science

A field trial was conducted to investigate the use of peas (Pisum sativum cv. Valverde), wheat (Triticum aestivum cv. Capo) and oilseed radish (Raphanus sativus var. oleiformis cv. Adagio) as trap crops to control wireworm in potato fields. We investigated the efficacy of trap crops and distance...

link.springer.com

Thanks
I can see where you are coming from now. Its a different concept to trap crops for PCN.
I saw Bob Vernon did work in strawberries and that worked. Lentils mixed with wheat seed reduced damage.
Be careful in potatoes, it hasnt tended to work, in some cases it made it worse
What does appear to reduce damage is intercropping potatoes with buckwheat, we are working with that in a Cupgra trial this year. The detail of working it into the rest of the agronomy will be a tad challenging I suspect.

EPF can be useful, some of the Metarhizium strains can be very useful but as you know, it needs the right conditions. Impressive when it does though!

I know its not an Agriotes but I found this yesterday

 

[Hindsight]

It very good Lincolnshire silt but poorly farmed with spring cereals and we rent it every five years for spuds.

Nemathorin?

 

[Skater]

Nemathorin?

I have seen very bad damage where Nemathorin has been used. It does reduce it, but you could achieve that level of reduction by harvesting 2-3 weeks earlier I would say.
A farmer in Ireland said he had 80% damage in Rooster and had used 30K of Nemathorin

 

[Fubar]

Local grower has got potatoes on some land that has been PP for best part of 50 years. Not particularly well managed either- left to go a bit wild. Be interesting to see what they come out like. Don't know how it was even allowed to be cultivated with all the environmental rules.

 

[Skater]

will be interesting
can advise on monitoring

 

[ganderman]

Nemathorin?

Yes full rate.

 

[Mixedupfarmer]

We lost a 20 acre field to wireworm last year it hadn’t been grass in fifty years and the ph is at least 8 or above .

Had similar on high ph silt in the past.

 

[Hindsight]

Yes full rate.

Had similar on high ph silt in the past.

What did you do with them? Chippers / Prepack / Processing?

 

[Mixedupfarmer]

What did you do with them? Chippers / Prepack / Processing?

Stockfeed

 

[Hindsight]

Stockfeed

Agggh: Stockfeed - thats given me the heeby Geebees!

 

[Mixedupfarmer]

Agggh: Stockfeed - thats given me the heeby Geebees!

Never had problem before, but they were bad. At least they were used to feed our own cattle I suppose.

 

[Hindsight]

Never had problem before, but they were bad. At least they were used to feed our own cattle I suppose.

I have been a tad dismissive of this Wireworm issue where not following grass. I had better keep quiet. Sorry to hear about your loss - not good.

 

[ollie989898]

Local grower has got potatoes on some land that has been PP for best part of 50 years. Not particularly well managed either- left to go a bit wild. Be interesting to see what they come out like. Don't know how it was even allowed to be cultivated with all the environmental rules.

I encountered a similar issue in the past. Farmers would intend to plough up old pasture, plant a crop of wheat, or brassicas or whatever, then use that as an entry to reseed it to grass.

Ministry thinking was that 5 years in grass= permanent grass. Even if this was grass they had reseeded annually each autumn, because they would put this down as grass on every entry for their SFP/BPS there was some concern this would mean they couldn't plough it up.

Only you can plough up grass however old it may be, provided you did an EIA at the time. And for virtually all farms and all farmland, this would be no problem because if it was land that was being farmed, with fertiliser, cutting, spraying, harrowing, slurry etc etc farmers would have recorded detailing when this was done. It was thus easy to prove that this land was in fact not some sacred grassland no one could plough up.

 

[Skater]

I have been a tad dismissive of this Wireworm issue where not following grass. I had better keep quiet. Sorry to hear about your loss - not good.

I have seen so many issues where no grass certainly since before WWII done agronomy on there about 40 years, they plough, regularly and when he started over winter stubble for ELS, they appeared.

 

[Skater]

Thanks
I can see where you are coming from now. Its a different concept to trap crops for PCN.
I saw Bob Vernon did work in strawberries and that worked. Lentils mixed with wheat seed reduced damage.
Be careful in potatoes, it hasnt tended to work, in some cases it made it worse
What does appear to reduce damage is intercropping potatoes with buckwheat, we are working with that in a Cupgra trial this year. The detail of working it into the rest of the agronomy will be a tad challenging I suspect.

EPF can be useful, some of the Metarhizium strains can be very useful but as you know, it needs the right conditions. Impressive when it does though!

I know its not an Agriotes but I found this yesterday

View attachment 1133360

This was Metarhizium, I got it identified as it was submitted as part of the Enigma project