Aphids

Aphids

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
Tracking aphids. Aphids cause all kinds of problems to all kinds of plants. They suck the life out of plants but they also carry viruses that can be very damaging. University of Idaho entomologist Dr. Sanford Eigenbrode has developed a program that helps dry pea and lentil growers determine whether to treat their crops for plant viruses carried by pea aphids and I talked with him recently. How you track aphids? We don't actually track them, we catch them. We have a network of 90 traps at 30 locations and what we are tracking is the arrival of these guys. We monitor those twice a week so that we get a picture of the patterns of arrival. We then let reducers know what the status of aphid arrival. Do you have the technology to examine them for the viruses that they are carrying? We do. We are able run them through a chain reaction to detect the virus. Do you have any expectations about oncoming aphids and the viruses they are carrying? The viruses that we see are the ones that we look for. We are limited that way. Historically to viruses have been the big problem here. Bean leaf roll virus and

pea enation mosaic virus. Pea streak virus has also been a problem intermittently, it may come back but we have not detected it very often.

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