Contact Us
 2/10/2020

Eureka: A Seed Treatment that Goes Well with Integrated Pest Management!

Written By Nicolas Perraud
Something went wrong. Please try again later...

There are several insects that are threatening oil seed rape production say Maria Cîrjă and Andrei Ciocoiu of Corteva Agriscience Romania. The main insects causing damage to winter oil seed rape are weevils (Ceutorhynchus spp.), the turnip sawfly (Athalia rosae), rape beetle (Meligethes aeneus), several species of flea beetles (Phyllotreta spp and Psylliodes spp.) and the green peach aphid (Myzus persicae).

We are happy to say that our product Lumiposa is really good at controlling three major threats: PhyllotretaAthaliaand Psylliodes.

Although these insects may be small, they can cause huge damage to the oil seed rape fields. If we look at a normal year in terms of rainfall, then usually the damage can be as high as 10-25%. However, it gets much worse under drought conditions, where these three insects can destroy more than half of all the small plants.

The reasons why Lumiposa is such a good solution to control these three insect species is that the active ingredient is cyantraniliprole. This is the only approved treatment that has a very good efficacy for PhyllotretaAthaliaand Psylliodes.

From an efficiency point of view, the farmers that have used Lumiposa are very satisfied but consider the price still relatively high compared with former technology that was based on neonicotinoids. We should not forget that in Romania, one bag of 2 million kernels is sufficient for planting 3 to 3,3 hectares, whereas in other countries this is sufficient for at least 4, and in some cases 5 ha.

One of the nice things that we really like about Lumiposa® is that it has a favourable toxicological and eco-toxicological profile, obviously when it is applied according to the recommendations on the label. This means that these characteristics make the product an excellent choice for Integrated Pest Management (IPM) programmes because it also maximises the effectiveness of beneficial insects and other organisms. Thanks to our research, we know that it selectively controls pests that feed on plant tissue. And from those and official data we know that Lumiposa® oilseed rape seed treatments are unlikely to pose a risk to pollinators and beneficial arthropods due to the product’s toxicity profile in combination with low to no exposure levels.

Seeing the good success with the product, we are now planning to release Lumiposa in several other countries like Hungary, Poland and Moldova in 2020 and 2021.