Aphides Absent

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31784, 14 September 1968, Page 9

Aphides Absent

Officers of the Plant Diseases Division of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, who have been looking for cereal aphides in wheat crops this week, have found an almost complete absence of these insects.

Dr R. Close, of the substation of the division at Lincoln, said late this week that on Tuesday and Wednesday with Mr R. I. Mulholland he had inspected 21 crops in the Darfield area. They had travelled from the Sheffield district down to Greendale, Aylesbury and Courtenay, back to Racecourse Hill and then down through Darfield. Most of the wheat crops seemed to have been sown in early June or in July and were at the three to six leaf stage. No aphides could be seen in any of the crops, except for a trace in one crop at Courtenay.

Mr Mulholland had also looked at two further crops in the Sheffield area.

Crops had also been inspected in the Loburn and Hororata areas on Tuesday, again with no aphides being found.

“The use of granular organophosphate insecticides on these or similar crops is not warranted at this stage,” Dr Close said.

The aphid and virus committee planned to meet later in the month, he said, when they would issue a statement on spring flights of cereal aphides and would make their recommendations.