2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38
The fat-legged melilot seed-eater is practically ubiquitous and damages the crops of the sweet clover with great appetite. Quite often, it also harms the growing alfalfa - these pests inflict especially serious damage on alfalfa crops in the European part of Russia and the Far East. The crops of sweet clover, which is a high-quality protein feed for various farm animals, also suffer greatly in these regions. In addition, sweet clover significantly increases soil fertility, and flowering plants are also excellent honey plants. In order to protect the crops of this valuable legume, it is important to systematically deal with vicious pests
Meet the pest
The thick-legged melilot seed-eater is a beetle ranging in size from 2, 5 to 2, 8 mm. The rostrum of these voracious parasites is plump and short, and their body is densely covered with brownish-yellowish monotonous scales. On the sides of their elytra and pronotal disks, numerous dark scales can be seen, and the pronotum themselves are slightly narrowed towards the bases. The whitish larvae are slightly bent towards the ventral side.
The standard wintering place for bugs is plant debris or the upper soil layer. The gluttonous parasites leave their wintering grounds very early, migrating to the crops of the growing sweet clover or to its wild varieties (in most cases, the wild sweet clover is the reservation of cultivated sweet clover varieties). In the forest-steppe, such activity of bugs can usually be observed in April, in the first half of it. Additional food for beetles is young leaves, tops of stems and cuttings, in which the insatiable parasites eat out numerous pits or holes.
About a month later, closer to mid-May, females begin to lay eggs, and they usually place them in the upper third of the leaves, one egg each in the parenchyma of the leaf tissues. As a result of such activity, in the places of development of harmful larvae, a huge number of galls begin to form, the average size of which reaches from 0.5 to 0.7 square centimeters. And the leaves near the sites of damage are bent upward along the edges. By the way, the period of oviposition of thick-legged melilot seed-eaters is often extended in time to two to three months.
The larvae developing inside the galls feed exclusively on their tissues. Having completed their food, they immediately gnaw out their exits and fall to the ground through the holes made. After that, the larvae go deep into the ground and after some time pupate there.
Beetles of the new generation do not emerge on the soil surface, staying in their places of birth until the onset of spring. During one growing season, only one generation of these vicious parasites usually develops.
How to fight
The main protective measures against the voracious thick-legged melilot seed-eaters are competent crop rotation, adherence to sowing dates, proper isolation of crops and timely harvesting. Crops of sweet clover should be isolated as much as possible from all other legumes (sainfoin, legumes, alfalfa, clover, etc.). Such simple methods can significantly reduce the susceptibility of this crop to a wide variety of pests.
Before sowing sweet clover, it is advisable to scarify the seeds, and immediately before sowing, treat them with "Rizotorfin" or "Nitragin", as well as fertilizers containing boron and molybdenum. When sowing on light sandy loam soils, seeds are usually planted to a depth of two to two and a half centimeters, and on cohesive soils - to a depth of one and a half to two centimeters. As for insecticides, they usually begin to be used only in case of mass destruction of crops.
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