Scientists with Agriculture and Agri-food Canada are working on ways to try to help farmers who grow squash, cucumbers and watermelons deal with the ravaging of their crops by spotted and striped cucumber beetles, but without the need for chemical applications.
Suzanne Blatt at the Kentville Research and Development Centre is working with tiny worms to deal with the beetles.
And like so many other problems, it’s an issue connected to climate change.
“It’s been an increasing issue since about the mid 20-teens, that’s when summers started to get warmer and stay warmer,” Blatt said.
The beetles are native to North America, but have worked their way north.
As if that wasn’t enough, in 2020 researchers noted that it was now warm enough that were was a second flush, or emergence, of new beetles.
“They appear on your crop, they mate, they lay their eggs, the larvae hatch and feed on the roots, so that causes problems, the adults will feed on your flowers and your leaves, which causes problems, and the adults can vector a bacterial wilt, so there are three hits that they can do,” Blatt said. “But there is so much heat that those larvae had time to pupate, become adults and then appear and start the process again.”
‘If you can hit those, you’re fine’
That created new problems, because normally there is only one generation and “if you can hit those, you’re fine.”
It meant an updated strategy to what was being tried in 2019, which was crop trapping. That involves planting something more appealing to the beetles than the crop a grower wants to protect, such as putting zucchini or a hubbard variety of squash around buttercup squash. The trap crop is smaller and planted near the cash crop.
“The idea is that you’re planting a line around the rows you’re trying to protect, so (the beetles) would spend their time there,” Blatt said
The second wave
That experiment was looking good in the first year, until that second wave showed up.
So in 2021, the team transplanted a second trap crop at about the time the new beetles would have been emerging.
“The next thing we ended up thinking about was, ‘now that we have them there, how can we stop them from getting even to that second generation?’”
Enter the nematodes. Or, more specifically, entomopathogenic nematodes. That’s a group of carnivores that feed on the eggs, pupae, or often the larvae of insects.
Beetle, meet worm
The team introduced the microscopic worms to the trap crop in 2022 after the first flush of beetles.
“Now when the larvae come out, the nematodes are eating them,” Blatt said. “So, we should be able to stop that second flush.”
Ideally, that interrupts the cycle and reduces the numbers in a particular area.
Striped cucumber beetles outnumber a bee on a squash flower. Scientists with Agriculture and Agri-food Canada are looking a the use of carniverous nematodes to help combat the destructive pest. – Agriculture and Agri-food Canada
There are companies that are producing the nematodes commercially, but one of the hindrances to a grower trying to use them on a large scale is that the recommended application is 2.47 billion nematodes per hectare.
“That is a lot,” Blatt said. “A packet of 50 million can run from $50 to $150 dollars.”
That would be $2,500 per hectare.
“The cost to apply it to everything is just prohibitive,” she said.
That’s why the research is on attracting the beetles the trap crops and eliminating them there.
“The idea is to keep the cost down,” Blatt said “When you’re applying it to just the trap crop, you can take your 50 million package and it goes a lot further than if you’re trying to apply it to every plant in every row.”
The dip solution
Another method under trial is to dip transplants into a solution with the nematodes to infuse it directly into the plant ball before planting.
Part of the issue there is that they’re on the plant long before the beetles shows up, and may start to move away in search of food.
While it would be ideal if the nematodes just reproduced and expanded their hunting grounds to provide wider protection, Blatt said, many of the ones being produced commercially may not be adapted to Nova Scotia’s climate and able to survive the winter. So for now, the expectation is that the research will show that plastering the trap crop will work for one year.
As part of the research the team also planted nasturtiums. While that doesn’t seem to be effective at driving the beetles out, it did repel squash bugs to lay their eggs further away, Squash bugs are another pest that arrive after the cucumber beetles.
“For the home gardener, I would argue it’s going to be a benefit,” she said. If you’re planting your own stuff in, start your trap crops inside about a week ahead of the others, so when you put everything in the garden your trap crop is about to flower. That will pull them off anything that doesn’t have flowers. If you’re an early riser, go out first thing in the morning and shake the flowers out into soapy water.”
That will remove the beetles, she said. The best thing for the squash bug for home gardeners is to look under the leaves for the bronze-coloured eggs and squish them.”
Some Ontario doctors have started offering a free shot that can protect babies from respiratory syncytial virus while Quebec will begin its immunization program next month.
The new shot called Nirsevimab gives babies antibodies that provide passive immunity to RSV, a major cause of serious lower respiratory tract infections for infants and seniors, which can cause bronchiolitis or pneumonia.
Ontario’s ministry of health says the shot is already available at some doctor’s offices in Ontario with the province’s remaining supply set to arrive by the end of the month.
Quebec will begin administering the shots on Nov. 4 to babies born in hospitals and delivery centers.
Parents in Quebec with babies under six months or those who are older but more vulnerable to infection can also book immunization appointments online.
The injection will be available in Nunavut and Yukon this fall and winter, though administration start dates have not yet been announced.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 21, 2024.
-With files from Nicole Ireland
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
ISLAMABAD (AP) — Polio cases are rising ahead of a new vaccination campaign in Pakistan, where violence targeting health workers and the police protecting them has hampered years of efforts toward making the country polio-free.
Since January, health officials have confirmed 39 new polio cases in Pakistan, compared to only six last year, said Anwarul Haq of the National Emergency Operation Center for Polio Eradication.
The new nationwide drive starts Oct. 28 with the aim to vaccinate at least 32 million children. “The whole purpose of these campaigns is to achieve the target of making Pakistan a polio-free state,” he said.
Pakistan regularly launches campaigns against polio despite attacks on the workers and police assigned to the inoculation drives. Militants falsely claim the vaccination campaigns are a Western conspiracy to sterilize children.
Most of the new polio cases were reported in the southwestern Balochistan and southern Sindh province, following by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and eastern Punjab province.
The locations are worrying authorities since previous cases were from the restive northwest bordering Afghanistan, where the Taliban government in September suddenly stopped a door-to-door vaccination campaign.
Afghanistan and Pakistan are the two countries in which the spread of the potentially fatal, paralyzing disease has never been stopped. Authorities in Pakistan have said that the Taliban’s decision will have major repercussions beyond the Afghan border, as people from both sides frequently travel to each other’s country.
The World Health Organization has confirmed 18 polio cases in Afghanistan this year, all but two in the south of the country. That’s up from six cases in 2023. Afghanistan used a house-to-house vaccination strategy this June for the first time in five years, a tactic that helped to reach the majority of children targeted, according to WHO.
Health officials in Pakistan say they want the both sides to conduct anti-polio drives simultaneously.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Millions of people with private health insurance would be able to pick up over-the-counter methods like condoms, the “morning after” pill and birth control pills for free under a new rule the White House proposed on Monday.
Right now, health insurers must cover the cost of prescribed contraception, including prescription birth control or even condoms that doctors have issued a prescription for. But the new rule would expand that coverage, allowing millions of people on private health insurance to pick up free condoms, birth control pills, or “morning after” pills from local storefronts without a prescription.
The proposal comes days before Election Day, as Vice President Kamala Harris affixes her presidential campaign to a promise of expanding women’s health care access in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to undo nationwide abortion rights two years ago. Harris has sought to craft a distinct contrast from her Republican challenger, Donald Trump, who appointed some of the judges who issued that ruling.
“The proposed rule we announce today would expand access to birth control at no additional cost for millions of consumers,” Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement. “Bottom line: women should have control over their personal health care decisions. And issuers and providers have an obligation to comply with the law.”
The emergency contraceptives that people on private insurance would be able to access without costs include levonorgestrel, a pill that needs to be taken immediately after sex to prevent pregnancy and is more commonly known by the brand name “Plan B.”
Without a doctor’s prescription, women may pay as much as $50 for a pack of the pills. And women who delay buying the medication in order to get a doctor’s prescription could jeopardize the pill’s effectiveness, since it is most likely to prevent a pregnancy within 72 hours after sex.
If implemented, the new rule would also require insurers to fully bear the cost of the once-a-day Opill, a new over-the-counter birth control pill that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved last year. A one-month supply of the pills costs $20.
Federal mandates for private health insurance to cover contraceptive care were first introduced with the Affordable Care Act, which required plans to pick up the cost of FDA-approved birth control that had been prescribed by a doctor as a preventative service.
The proposed rule would not impact those on Medicaid, the insurance program for the poorest Americans. States are largely left to design their own rules around Medicaid coverage for contraception, and few cover over-the-counter methods like Plan B or condoms.
