2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38
The small sowing nutcracker is found everywhere in Russia. It is especially widespread in the forest-steppe and steppes, as well as in the southern part of the taiga. The larvae of this polyphagous pest damage tiny shoots and seeds, potato tubers, cereals, as well as root crops of carrots and beets and a number of other crops. The small sowing nutcracker is one of the most dangerous pests of agricultural crops
Meet the pest
The small sowing nutcracker is a beetle, the size of which reaches from 6 to 8.5 mm. Most often, these pests are colored in dark brown tones, but sometimes they can also be light brown. Throughout their body, you can see a slight gray pubescence. The heads of the pests are convex, roughly and rather densely punctate. The length of the elongated front dorsum of these parasites slightly exceeds their width, and near the front chest, narrow outgrowths entering the recesses can be seen. Such an unusual device makes it possible for the accidentally overturned small sowing clickers, arching the body, first jump up, and then stand on their feet with a rather characteristic sound. The legs of these gluttonous parasites, like the antennae, are colored brownish yellow.
The size of broad-oval smooth milky-white eggs of small sown click beetles reaches 0.5 mm. Larvae of the last instar grow up to 18.5 mm, and their color varies from dark yellow to yellow. During their life, which includes nine ages, they manage to shed as many as eight times.
Beetles overwinter in the soil at a depth that often reaches a meter, and the depth of occurrence of larvae of different ages on average ranges from fifty to eighty centimeters. Beetles are selected on the soil surface in the forest-steppe zone in the first half of May. As a rule, you can meet them until about mid-June. At the end of May, there is a massive summer of small sowing clickers. They also lay eggs during this time. And these scoundrels feed mainly on pollen, a little less often on leaves of cereals.
Eggs are laid by females near the roots of cereal plants in the soil. Their maximum fertility usually reaches 100 - 120 eggs. Ripening of eggs often occurs without additional nutrition. And the duration of the incubation period is always determined by the temperature regime and in different parts of the habitat of small sowing clickers can fluctuate within fairly solid limits. The larvae born in late May or early June begin to feed on the roots of cereals, and also damage the tillering nodes, seeds and underground tubers with stalks. Pupae develop depending on temperature from eight to twenty-seven days. And the bugs fledging from late July to late August remain in the soil until spring. They are capable of emerging from the soil in autumn only when very warm weather is established.
The complete development cycle of small sowing clickers is about four years. The beetles have a rather secretive lifestyle, they fly reluctantly, differing in particular activity in the afternoon, usually after sunset.
How to fight
Among the most important agrotechnical measures, which are a good preventive measure in the fight against small sowing clickers, one can single out the elimination of weeds, fall plowing and thorough tillage, fertilization (special attention is paid to ammonia and potassium fertilizers), liming of soils and their disking, as well as adherence to the rules of crop rotation. … Spring and autumn digging of plots is also capable of destroying a substantial number of bugs, larvae and eggs. Loosening of the soil between the rows will be especially effective somewhere in May-July (during the period of oviposition of parasites).
In greenhouses and on beds, small sowing clickers are often caught using baits, which are laid out before sowing seeds or before planting seedlings. As a bait, take small potatoes, cut into several pieces. Small twigs are stuck into each piece and the baits are buried to a depth of five to ten centimeters into the soil (cut down). Two days later, the baits are checked, and the larvae that have dug into them are destroyed. Moreover, you can use the old pieces several times, wetting their slices with water or renewing them. And after sowing seeds and planting seedlings, such baits are laid out along the rows.
It is also useful to plant green manures on the plot that scare away small sowing clickers - buckwheat, spinach, rapeseed, mustard, black beans and peas, oil radish, rape or sweet clover.
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