2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38
The apple fruit sawfly, which lives not only in woodland, but also in the colorful forest-steppe, loves to feast on juicy apples. Fruits mined by the larvae of the earliest centuries often do not fall off, and the wounds inflicted by gluttonous parasites quickly heal and gradually grow in the form of belts simultaneously with apples. And when apples are damaged by older larvae, the inlets continue to remain open, and rusty liquid slowly oozes out of them. During the years of mass reproduction of these harmful parasites, there is a significant decrease in the yield or its loss in the case of a weak flowering of apple trees
Meet the pest
The size of the imago of evil sawflies ranges from 6 to 7 mm. From above they are painted in dark brown tones, and from below they have a slight yellowish tint. All pests are endowed with black on top and yellowish-ore on the bottom abdomen and thin yellow legs. The short antennae of the sawflies are equipped with nine segments. In addition, each individual is endowed with two pairs of transparent wings, equipped with dark veins.
Sawfly eggs reaching 0.7 mm are characterized by an oval shape and glassy white color. Shiny shriveled yellow-white larvae, growing up to 12 - 13 mm, have seven pairs of abdominal legs. And their heads are painted black-brown. By the way, alarmed larvae begin to emit an extremely unpleasant odor. As for the little white pupae measuring 7 - 8 mm, they are comfortably located in oval and rather dense gray cocoons.
The larvae of gluttonous parasites overwinter in cocoons, at a depth of five to ten centimeters in the soil. Slightly less often, you can find individuals that have sunk fifteen to twenty centimeters into the soil. When the soil at a depth of about ten centimeters begins to warm up to about twelve degrees, apple fruit sawflies begin to pupate. Pupae usually develop over twelve to sixteen days.
The start of the summer of pests completely coincides with the phenophase of bud loosening in summer apple varieties. Malicious sawflies are especially active when calm sunny weather is established, when the thermometer rises above sixteen degrees.
Malicious females lay their eggs in miniature "pockets" incisions made by them in the tissues of receptacles and tiny sepals. At the same time, they are able to easily distinguish productive flowers from "barren flowers". By the way, the eggs of the pest lay one at a time, and their total fertility is about fifty to eighty eggs.
After about a week or two, tiny larvae revive, gnawing countless mines under the delicate skin of the fruit, going in the direction from the cups to the stalks. At the end of the first molt, two or three days later, the harmful larvae move to other fruits and make narrow winding passages under their skin. And in several fruits (usually from three to six), each larva makes straight paths leading to the seed chambers, and eats enough seeds there. The development of larvae takes from eighteen to twenty-three days in time. Having reached the last age, they eat up all the seeds and completely destroy the seed chambers, as a result of which the latter are completely filled with an unpleasant brownish wormhole. And thirty to forty days after the apple trees of the early varieties have faded, the gorged larvae move into the soil, located at the depth of the loosened layer. There, pests form cocoons.
About fifteen percent of gluttonous parasites enter diapause in the soil and overwinter twice, and from three to five percent of individuals even overwinter three times. In general, these pests of apple trees are characterized by one-year generation.
How to fight
Before the larvae finish feeding, they cultivate the soil in the near-trunk circles and aisles, loosening the soil layer to a depth of nine to eleven centimeters - as a result of such measures, the bulk of the sawflies are concentrated at this depth. And the subsequent loosening of the soil with the simultaneous capture of the already loosened layer contributes to the mass death of gluttonous parasites.
As for spraying with insecticides, it is advisable to carry out them during the massive summer of sawflies.
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