Monitoring with MagicTrap to inform OSR drilling decisions

As trials manager for Agrovista, with responsibility for the company’s nationwide network of AgX R&D sites, David Blance is all too familiar with the threat cabbage stem flea beetle (CSFB) poses to oilseed rape establishment.

“Oilseed is an essential break crop, but establishment has become my main concern,” he says. “Cabbage stem flea beetle can decimate a crop and key to good establishment is getting the crop through the ground after drilling to a stage where it's safe from attack.”

He acknowledges that there is no single solution to the CSFB threat. Use of olfactory deterrents to mask the smell of the oilseed rape volatiles that attract CSFB and companion crops to disguise the emerging OSR crop are among the IPM techniques Agrovista is testing, along with leaving long stubbles and timing drilling to avoid the CSFB migration peak.

The ability to monitor cabbage stem flea beetle (CSFB) levels would be particularly useful in helping to inform drilling decisions, says David, who was among the first agronomists to test the MagicTrap digital yellow water trap for oilseed rape pests - at Agrovista’s Lamport AgX site in Northamptonshire - in Bayer’s UK development trials last autumn.

“MagicTrap is a brilliant piece of kit,” he says. “It gives you a way of monitoring the cabbage stem flea beetle population locally. It takes photographs of the trap contents, identifies the pests, does a count and sends the data directly to an app on your smartphone.

“Twice a day you get an update from the trap on how many flea beetle have been caught and when they were caught. If you have that information, you can monitor if and when flea beetle numbers are increasing over time and you are able to see when peak migration is happening, which means you can avoid drilling during that time.”

Armed with information on CSFB numbers, growers have the option of drilling before the CSFB population starts to build or as the population is declining, says David.

“We've only used MagicTrap for one year, but it’s already been very useful. It certainly generated interest locally with growers who have been drilling late and wanted to know whether we could see whether the flea beetle population was on the decline or remaining at a high level.”

David believes a network of MagicTraps could help provide a nationwide picture of CSFB migration.

“Migration won't be the same from the north to south of the country. An on-farm network of MagicTraps would give us local information together with a national picture, based on aggregated information on CSFB migration.

“Once flea beetle have landed, they don't take off again, they only land in one place, so once you stopped seeing them in the MagicTrap, you know they're not going to move from one field to another,” he adds.

“The information we get from MagicTrap could definitely enable us to more accurately establish drilling dates to help better manage the CSFB threat and hopefully improve OSR yields,” he concludes.