2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38
The sunflower (or sunflower) barbel lives mainly in the forest-steppe and steppe zones. And it harms not only sunflower - in addition to it, these scoundrels can also damage various plants from the Aster family, as well as weeds: wormwood, burdock, thistle and sow thistle. The damage of sunflower stalks by larvae is most noticeable at rather late sowing dates. Sometimes damaged plants can be hacked by the wind. The crops inhabited at an early age by the sunflower longhorn beetle noticeably lag behind in growth and often die even before the beginning of flowering
Meet the pest
The sunflower barbel is a brilliant black beetle reaching 19 - 21 mm in length, the front dorsum of which is densely covered with numerous hairs of an ore-yellowish hue. On the anterior dorsum, such hairs form three longitudinal stripes, and on the elytra they fold into specks. Thanks to the well-developed wings, these pests fly quite well. The head of the sunflower barbel is brownish and shiny, slightly tilted downward, the crown and forehead are slightly depressed. And the body of this pest is arched.
Cylindrical, matte milky white eggs of sunflower barbel are slightly tapered and equipped with rounded tips. And legless, yellowish-white narrow larvae reach a length of about 20 - 27 mm. They are slightly arcuate curved, and small hair tufts grow on their thoracic segments.
Eggs are laid by females from the undersides of leaf petioles inside the stalks, where they gnaw the skin at a distance of twenty to sixty centimeters from the soil surface. As a result of such preparatory measures, rounded areas reaching 5 - 8 mm in diameter are formed, in the center of which deep cracks appear, in which eggs are laid (usually one at a time). The total fertility of females reaches about fifty eggs. After about 3 to 9 days, tiny larvae begin to emerge from the eggs.
The formed larvae make narrow downward passages directed towards the root collar, located inside the stems. As the larvae grow, such passages gradually expand. The larvae hibernate below the soil level inside the underground parts of the stalks, having previously sealed the passages at the top with stubs. And their pupation occurs in the spring at the level of the soil, also in the stalks.
The adults can be observed from May to July. They are especially active in the daytime, gnawing at the cuttings and in the skin of the stems narrow longitudinal stripes going from top to bottom.
The stalks of sunflower damaged by voracious larvae almost always break, and the seed yield is significantly reduced. And the oil content in the surviving seeds will be relatively low. The sunflower barbel causes the greatest harm in the European part of Russia (to be more precise, in the southeast), as well as in the steppe zone.
How to fight
When growing sunflower, you should adhere to the early sowing dates. A good measure is also the sowing of carapace varieties of this crop - inside their peel there is a strong protective layer that is not able to gnaw through a number of sunflower pests. It is systematically necessary to eliminate weeds from the site. It is important to have time to mow wild weeds from the Asteraceae family before seed formation begins. Deep winter plowing, as well as regular inter-row cultivation, will also be a good measure.
Having collected bright baskets of a sunflower, the stems should be immediately cut as close to the ground as possible. All post-harvest residues of this crop should be buried in the ground as deep as possible. And the tops removed from the plots can be used for various technical purposes or as fuel in the winter.
If the number of sunflower barbel is too large, in the most extreme case, the use of insecticides is also allowed.
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