Children have enjoyed playing with nesting dolls for years and years. You know the ones — where opening one doll leads to finding another, smaller doll inside. What does a delightful children’s toy have to do with pea aphids in lentil crops? Let’s explain.
Pea aphids are parthenogenic and much like the beloved nesting dolls, each aphid has another aphid already inside even as it hatches. That’s right, new pea aphids complete development within the mother while already carrying embryos of the third generation. With almost all of the embryos being born female and already pregnant, pea aphids can reproduce at an alarming rate.
It’s this speed at which the pea aphid population increases that means the economic thresholds differ depending on how soon a producer plans on spraying, says Dr. Sean Prager of the University of Saskatchewan in this episode of RealAgriculture’s Pulse School. Another factor that can change the thresholds is location, as well as environmental conditions such as precipitation and temperature, he explains.
With an aphid’s ability to reproduce at a substantial rate, as well as their development of wings and the ability to travel long distances to follow feed, these small insects can quickly become a problem in pulses. Not only do they damage the plants through direct feeding and produce waste that causes sooty mold (a fungal disease that prevents photosynthesis) but pea aphids can also transmit viruses.
In this episode of Pulse School, Prager discusses the signs and symptoms of pea aphids, their developmental stages and how they affect crops in their different stages, potential solutions, as well as on-going research.
See the video below.
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