2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38
The cherry aphid, which can be found literally everywhere, is very partial to cherries and cherries and populates their leaves mainly from the lower sides. The leaves attacked by pests begin to wrinkle either across or in a spiral, and then turn black and dry out, taking on the appearance of burnt ones. Often, cherry aphids also move to the fruits, contaminating them with numerous molted skins and small excrement. This to a large extent contributes to a sharp decline in the commercial quality of the crop. In young gardens and nurseries, looseness and strong curvature of the shoots can also often be observed, which in turn leads to their freezing
Meet the pest
The length of wingless parthenogenetic females of cherry aphid is approximately 2 - 2, 4 mm. All of them have a pear-like shape and are endowed with six-segmented antennae and black tubes. Above the pests are painted black, and below they are brownish.
Winged parthenogenetic females with black color grow to 2.4 mm in length, and amphigonic females - up to 1.6 mm. The amphigonous females are characterized by the absence of wings and an oval shape. And the size of the black winged males of cherry aphids is about 1.7 mm.
Fertilized eggs overwinter near the base of the kidneys. With the onset of April, as soon as the fruit buds of the early varieties of sweet cherries begin to swell, the revival of the larvae starts. Twelve to fifteen days later, when the cherry blossoms, females appear, reviving up to one hundred and one hundred and fifteen larvae in forty to fifty days of their life. One colony of founders often forms ten to eighteen new colonies at the tops of the shoots. And in one spring-summer period, from nine to twelve generations of wingless parthenogenetic females develop. Moreover, in each generation, starting from the third, winged migrants develop simultaneously with such females. These insects migrate to the bedstraw, which is considered a secondary plant, giving rise to parthenogenetic generation there. In a word, cherry aphid during this period simultaneously develops on the bedstraw and on fruit trees.
With the onset of September-October, wingless and winged individuals begin to appear in the colonies of settlers. Wingless individuals revive larvae on the bedstraw inhabited by them, which subsequently transform into winged males, and winged individuals migrate to cherries with cherries, reviving there from eight to ten larvae, which after one and a half to two weeks are transformed into amphigonic sexually mature females. After mating with males, females lay three or four shiny wintering eggs, painted black.
Towards the end of July and in August, a huge number of females and harmful larvae die as a result of a combination of low air humidity with high temperatures. In addition, coarsening of leaves and deterioration of nutritional conditions contribute to their death.
How to fight
Fat shoots are recommended to be systematically cut out. The same is done with the root shoots. This is due to the fact that both are very actively colonized by cherry aphids.
When the number of eggs of gluttonous parasites reaches ten to twenty pieces for every ten centimeters of shoots, before budding in early spring, fruit trees are treated with ovicides in the breeding centers of cherry aphids. The main thing is that the air temperature does not fall below four degrees.
If, on average, five or more colonies of cherry aphids begin to fall on every hundred leaves, the trees begin to be treated with insecticides.
Wood trunks, as well as the main branches, should be cleaned of dead bark particles in autumn, after which they are whitened with a lime solution.
Natural enemies - entomophages - help to significantly reduce the number of cherry aphids. Ladybugs are especially helpful in killing these pests.
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