Control of Canadian Insect Pests

Abstract

THE Canadian Government and the Empire Marketing Board are jointly financing a search in Europe for the parasites of certain Canadian insect pests. The Canadian Department of Agriculture has asked the help of the Parasite Breeding Laboratory at Farnham Royal, Bucks, which is maintained by the Empire Marketing Board, in combating the present severe outbreak of a forest insect, Diprion polytomum, and also in fighting the plague of balsam woolly aphis, which is causing serious injury to balsam fir in the Maritime Provinces. If the balsam woolly aphis infection spreads throughout the eastern forests, as it threatens to do, enormous losses in pulpwood will result. The only hope seems to lie in the introduction of a parasite to check the advance of the aphis. The pest came originally from Europe, but it is not common, and an intensive search will have to be made in Central Europe to find its insect parasites. These insects will then be brought to England and bred up at the Farnham Royal laboratories. Nearly one million insect parasites have been bred and dispatched from time to time from Farnham Royal to all parts of the Empire. The wheat-stem sawfly, one of the Western farmers' major problems, is now being investigated. Officers of the Imperial Institute of Entomology have collected parasites hi France and bred them up in England. Last season several large consignments of broken wheat straw, containing saw-flies plus parasites, were packed in special boxes and shipped to Canada. These parasites have been released in the wheatfields, and up to date are doing well.