Latest news with #AgricultureAndAgriFoodCanada
CBC
13-06-2025
- Health
- CBC
Maritime cereal grain farmers get access to new warning system for fungal disease
Scientists on Prince Edward Island have created a new warning system to help Maritime farmers avoid a costly disease called fusarium head blight, which can decrease grain yields while contaminating the crop with toxins. The Fusarium Head Blight Environmental Risk Forecast Tool can be found on the Atlantic Grain Council's website and is available to growers throughout the region. "Fusarium head blight is a really devastating disease that occurs pretty much around the world in cereal-growing regions," said Adam Foster, a cereal and oilseed pathologist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada who's based in Charlottetown. "Not only does it cause yield losses, like loss of harvest and seed, but it will also contaminate the grain with mycotoxins that can make it unsuitable for people and animals to actually eat if it gets to a high enough level." The risk of disease is higher when the weather is warm and wet, Foster said, adding that tropical nights can make it a lot worse. Those are conditions that could become more common in the Atlantic provinces due to climate change, he said. "What the forecast tool will actually do is examine weather over the last week and incorporate those factors into the models to… predict whether disease is likely to occur or not." Management strategies It's hard to predict at the beginning of any given growing season whether fusarium head blight will be a problem that year, Foster said. P.E.I. was hit particularly hard in 2023, resulting in a lot of grain being lost to the disease. "By the time you actually see the disease, it's too late to act. So having a prediction tool actually tell you ahead of time gives you a little bit of early warning of what's to come," he said. "With a proactive tool and other disease management practices… it is actually manageable." Other management practices include selecting selectively bred varieties that are partially resistant to the fungus, having a diverse crop rotation, and using chemical fungicides or biological control agents to suppress the disease, Foster said. A useful tool Steven Hamill, a farmer in Newton, P.E.I., expects the wheat in his fields to start flowering next week. He thinks the new forecasting tool will be an asset. "There's been years where there's thousands of acres that have been destroyed in the field or hauled out of bins, so there's huge economic impact in a bad year," Hamill said. Hamill said he sprays his crops with fungicide every year as a preventative measure, but not all farmers do the same. "Having the tool, I guess, will validate the decision… or help people make that decision if they don't use it every year," he said. The timely application of fungicides, along with implementing measures that help prevent and suppress the disease, is the best approach when it comes to managing flusarium head blight, Hamill said. The new forecasting tool adds another tool to the toolbox, he said. "I think it's great to have the collaboration with scientists and farmers and, you know, get them in the field together and determine what problems there [are] and what solutions they can come up with."
CBC
31-05-2025
- Health
- CBC
Bugs poised to flit into action for the season, P.E.I. scientist says
Humans aren't the only creatures that stay relatively hidden when the weather is lousy. This spring's chilly and rainy weather sidelined insects too, but a Charlottetown-based research scientist says that will change quickly now that the mercury is rising. "They tend to stay quiet when it's cold," Christine Noronha told CBC's Island Morning this week. "If this continues for very long, then it starts to have an impact on their survival and their movement." Noronha works with Agriculture and AgriFood Canada. She said bug survival rates have been "a little bit better" recently because Prince Edward Island's winters have been getting milder. Even when the temperature plummets, bugs can find shelter in plant debris and snow that collects along hedgerows. "With the spring being so cool, the insects are a little bit slower coming out," she said. "They wouldn't be feeding as much as well, [or] just moving around too from plant to plant or from one area to the next. "But [when] it does warm up, then you'll start to see them feeding a lot more, moving, flying around, moving from plant to plant … and also laying their eggs." That's because insects don't generate their own body heat like humans and other mammals do, but depend on external heat sources, Noronha said. "When the sun is shining, you will see some of them sitting in the sun or basking in the sun, kind of. They need that heat to heat up their … wing muscles so that they can fly. "Usually around 15 to 20 degrees is when they start to get really active." That can change even over the course of a single spring day, she said. Bumblebees, for example, are "kind of slow in the early morning when you see them, but then later on in the day, if it's sunny, they'll start moving around a lot more." Now for the bad news. "Mosquitoes and black flies and all that are doing fine," Noronha said. "They have a lower temperature range, so they are fine. They are out there." There is a bright side to that, though. Tree swallows and some other kinds of birds eat those insects, and frogs and minnows feed on the larvae of mosquitoes and black flies. "All those animals are doing fine, so it's just a slower process," Noronha said. "They're not getting as much to eat. But things haven't really come to that point where other animals are more active and insects are not." Another thing that people are seeing, according to Island social media pages dedicated to nature, are very large bees hanging around windows. Noronha said these are probably females emerging from their overwintering spots. "Insects in the fall, they come to the buildings because the buildings have heat and you have heat radiating out," she said. "Now they're searching for a place to start their nest because that's what happens every year… They search for places [where] they could make their bigger nest and have a colony… Eventually they're going to be the queens in the nest." Noronha said it's important for people who spend time in the woods or walking through tall grass to be on the lookout for ticks, which can spread Lyme disease. Wear long pants with long socks on, and check when you get home to see if a tick has attached itself to your skin. If that happens, she said you should remove the tick, put it in a container and get it checked to see what kind of tick it is. That's also her advice if you see an unusual insect around your property. Use iNaturalist or other online resources to find out what they are. "It's only when you know what something is that you can actually control it – or know if you need to control it or not. "The good bugs that are predators, you don't want to kill them, right? You want to keep them in the area."
