2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38
The yellow alfalfa seed is found almost everywhere in Russia. Sometimes it can be seen in the Carpathian region and woodlands. This active pest loves alfalfa more than anything else. Only one generation of these gluttonous parasites manages to develop per year, but this does not prevent them from causing quite serious damage to plants. The main harmfulness of yellow alfalfa seed-eaters is a decrease in seed yield - in the case of mass reproduction of these pests, losses can reach 70 - 80%
Meet the pest
The yellow alfalfa seed eater is a beetle ranging in size from 2, 1 to 2, 7 centimeters. The elytra and pronotum of these voracious parasites are densely covered with either oval or round and short blunt scales. On the elytra, the scales are usually wide and yellowish, and at the tops they are arranged in a mosaic pattern, abruptly rounded or slightly chopped off. The legs and antennae of yellow alfalfa seed-eaters are brownish-black, and the bottom of their bodies is covered with whitish-yellow scales.
The short, colorless eggs of these alfalfa enemies are about 0.6 mm in size and are characterized by a cigar-like shape. And the little white legless larvae are slightly curved and grow in length up to three to four millimeters.
Beetles overwinter in the upper soil layer, where they lie at a depth of three to seven, and sometimes up to fifteen centimeters. They often overwinter on alfalfa crops. By the way, harmful bugs can easily withstand temperatures up to minus thirty degrees. Overwintered parasites get out as soon as the soil warms up to fifteen to seventeen degrees. This usually occurs after the alfalfa regrowth in the second half of April or early May. It is noteworthy that bugs can concentrate for a long time near their wintering sites, eating buds and young leaves with stalks. At night, until approximately nine to ten o'clock in the morning, gluttonous parasites hide under lumps and cracks in the soil, as well as under the remains of plants. And they get to the tops of growing crops only if the air warms up to twenty degrees.
A particularly intense migration of yellow alfalfa seed-eaters can be observed at the stage of alfalfa budding and the start of its flowering. Often, pests travel five to six kilometers. And at the stage of the beginning of the formation of beans in alfalfa, they lay eggs. Females usually place them exclusively on green beans, gnawing round holes in their valves for this purpose. In these holes, the females then lay one egg at a time, less often - two or three. Their total fertility often reaches one and a half hundred eggs.
Once the laying process is complete, the bugs die off. However, some individuals go to the soil for secondary wintering. The embryonic development of voracious villains, as a rule, takes six to ten days. The holes made by females before oviposition in the bean valves quickly overgrow, and the hatched larvae feed on the alfalfa seeds located inside. In the forest-steppe, the egg-laying process usually starts in the second half of June, and it reaches its peak closer to the end of June and the first half of July - at this time, the mass flowering of alfalfa ends. The development of each larva takes an average of twenty days. During this period, each individual manages to destroy from two to four seeds.
In the case of mass reproduction of yellow alfalfa seed-eaters, one bean can simultaneously contain two or even three larvae. In the second half of June, the development of voracious larvae ends, and the satiated villains make holes in the valves of the beans, after which they crawl out through them and fall with the aim of subsequent pupation to the soil. They turn into pupae in earthen nests specially created for this. Pupae usually develop from five to fifteen days, and the new generation beetles remain in earthen cradles until spring.
How to fight
Before the alfalfa begins to grow, it is recommended to harrow the crops. And on too thickened crops, it will be advisable to carry out disking.
When planting various legumes, it is advisable to maintain a distance of at least one kilometer between them.
If suddenly on the testes, as well as at the stage of regrowth of stalks and budding of alfalfa, there are fifteen to twenty-five bugs for every hundred strokes of the net, insecticides are applied. Well suited for this purpose "Fufanon", "Bazudin", "Zolon" and "Karbofos".
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