Another update from Wellesbourne

Today the team have been looking for pests on plants. Andy checked out the untreated plots in the Brussels sprout trial - which is part of the SCEPTRE project. There were hardly any pests on the foliage - a few peach-potato aphids and one diamond-back moth caterpillar - which ties in well with the absence of these pests in our traps.

Marian counted the willow-carrot aphids in our carrot fly monitoring plot. There were 44 winged aphids and 55 wingless aphids on 3 x 0.5 m lengths of row - an increase on last week. There was also one parasitised aphid (parasitic wasp). The usual pattern of Wellesbourne is for the level of parasitism to increase over time until it finally wipes the population out.

We're continuing to collect large narcissus flies.....

Rosemary Collier : 18 Jun 2013 17:31 |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem