University News for July 27, 2010

Research conducted by the University of Manitoba suggests a natural enemy of the cabbage root maggot holds potential for controlling the pest in canola.

Root maggots cause an estimated to 20 to 40 million dollars damage to western Canadian canola crops each year.

Researchers with the University of Manitoba's Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences are gathering data needed to petition for the release of Aleochara bipustulata, a natural enemy of the cabbage root maggot found in Europe, as a biological control for root maggots.

Department of Entomology head Dr. Neil Holliday says scientists spent two to three years identifying the range of other organisms, other flies, this beetle might attack and where it might do those attacks.

Clip-Dr. Neil Holliday-University of Manitoba:
We've narrowed down our understanding of what it might attack and what sorts of locations it might do those attacks in.

We're relatively happy that it will in fact confine its attentions to root maggots in open areas such as canola fields.

What we're doing now, because the adults eat all sorts of small insects, is finding out how wide that diet of the adults is.

The literature indicates that its preferred food is root maggot eggs and we know that is true, that they will eat root maggot eggs.

We've been doing trials on now about 30 different species of other things that they might come into contact with to determine what other items that would be non-target items could be eaten by the adults.

So far we have shown that they are in fact fairly specific and that they don't have as broad a diet of non-target items as we had originally feared.

Dr. Holliday hopes to have data necessary to petition for release of Aleochara bipustulata in late 2011 or 2012.

For UniversityNews.Org, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

*University News is a presentation of the University of Manitoba's Faculty of Agricultural & Food Sciences