description
- The Cabbage Stem Flea Beetle (CSFB) is a little, iridescent, black beetle. It isn't related to fleas, but gets its name from having large, powerful femurs, which allow it to leap like a flea. CSFB feeds on cruciferous vegetables, which most people will know as "leafy greens", so things like broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower. While we don't eat oil seed rape, is a vital component of UK agriculture. It is used to generate rapeseed oil and generates around £768m for the UK economy. Crucially, oil seed rape is also a key rotation crop, which farmers grow to refresh the soil and keep pests of other major crops down. This means that if oil seed rape losses are so high, that farmers abandon it as a crop, it could lead to shortages in other crops, such as wheat. The husks of oil seed rape are also very high in protein and are used for lots of animal feed. In 2018 neo-nicotinoids, a type of pesticide that were systemic and as such would cover the entire crop, were banned. This meant our last line of defence against CSFB was pyretheroids, which you spray across a field. Unfortunately, these only cover the outside of a crop so don't do anything to prevent the larvae which are already inside the crop from doing the damage. Resistance is also now being seen to pyretheroids, so farmers have few options to control the damage. The global warming makes things even worse as they have been laying all through spring, meaning there are now thousands of young beetles emerging in fields, where they just move through the crop like locusts. It's estimated that CSFB accounts for between 5-15% of the crop being lost, or around £70m per year, so this is a problem that needs attention. In this project, a seeds coating approach based on frass - a natural insect repellent together with biomass based binder (adhesive) to be used to coat rape oil seeds to aim to resolve this problem. Seeds coating is a multi-million pound global business due to it's nature of high efficiency and high local pesticide concentration from seeds coating to be absorbed by seeds. Wasware and NIAB will closely work together to bring this technology from Phase 1 feasibility study to Phase 2, a full development project to transform this technology into a sustainable viable business.