2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38
The dark leafhopper is almost ubiquitous and has a special love for cereals. Adults flying before the onset of the October cold weather, closer to the end of summer, are quite harmful to winter crops. Dark leafhoppers develop in two generations, respectively, considerable damage to crops from their destructive activity can be caused. Particularly favorable conditions for the mass reproduction of these pests are created during dry seasons. Dark leafhoppers are also dangerous because they are carriers of pathogens of various viral diseases
Meet the pest
The size of adult dark leafhoppers is from 3.5 to 5 mm. Females differ from males in color - males are rather dark, almost black, and females are painted in delicate yellowish shades. The heads of the gluttonous parasites are equipped with a pair of black stripes located between the eyes. The second segments of their antennae are slightly thickened, and the tibia of the hind legs are incredibly mobile. As for the wings, they are transparent in dark leafhoppers. In males, the front wings are up to half smoky, and in females there are brownish strokes on their inner sides. Sometimes the wings can be shortened. Large spear-shaped spines in dark leafhoppers are pointed closer to the tips and equipped with longitudinal light stripes.
The yellowish larvae of the first and second generations are equipped with three gray stripes on the abdomen and are painted in yellowish tones. And from the third age, they are painted in brownish-gray shades. All larvae live hidden, avoiding open surfaces and sucking juices from the lower leaves of cereals. It is extremely rare that they can rise to the upper parts of growing crops, but this is done mainly by older larvae.
Larvae of the third and fourth generations overwinter mainly on roadsides and on cereal crops. With the onset of spring, dark leafhoppers appear much earlier than other varieties of leafhoppers. And already in the first half of May, their fledging begins. Adults fly in small groups to the root parts of the vegetation, as well as to the tissues of the growing leaves.
Pest eggs are usually laid in small piles in the tissue of old basal leaves. Putting them aside, they quickly perish. And the development of eggs of dark leafhoppers, as a rule, takes from ten to twelve to thirty to thirty-five days. Hatched larvae are often covered with a light waxy coating. Approximately in the middle of July, harmful larvae of the second generation revive, and fledging of these parasites is observed at the end of June and throughout July.
How to fight
The most important agrotechnical preventive measure is the destruction of grain carrion and prevention of its development, since the carrion carrion is an excellent reserve for harmful dark leafhoppers.
An excellent measure is the early peeling of the soil, which is plowed thoroughly two to three weeks later (usually after the seedlings of the volunteers begin to hatch). Such plowing leads to the death of not only harmful larvae, but also eggs laid by dark leafhoppers.
It is also important to know that the number of these ubiquitous parasites on sparse crops of spring and winter crops is much higher than on dense crops. The fact is that on crops perfectly warmed up by the sun, the fertility of females and the survival of larvae and eggs noticeably increase. In addition, the development of eggs with larvae under such conditions is greatly accelerated.
If for every square meter there are from fifty to one and a half hundred dark leafhoppers, they start spraying with insecticides. The best helpers in the fight against these pests are the drugs "Zalp", "Knockout" and "Commander".
Among the natural enemies of dark leafhoppers, which significantly reduce their numbers, one can note the parasites called Gonotopus formicarius, as well as various polyphagous entomophages.
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