Colorado beetle and protection against it

Everyone is well aware of such a pest of potatoes, tomatoes and other garden plants as the Colorado potato beetle. This striped pest every year creates many problems for the owners and can nullify all the work. Let's find out in detail why and how colorado appears and what methods of struggle and protection will be effective.

Harmfulness

The Colorado beetle is found in almost all regions where potatoes are grown. There are no potatoes - the pest will calmly eat the tops of eggplants, tomatoes, physalis, peppers, and in extreme cases, it does not disdain tobacco, petunia, wild nightshade or dereza. If there is no food or the weather is not conducive to reproduction, the beetle will wait.

The lifespan of the Colorado beetle is from one to three years. During this time, the insect constantly goes from sleep to wakefulness.

A beetle has 6 types of sleep:

• winter diapause (state of complete rest), which begins in autumn and lasts 75-90 days;
• winter oligopause (the period between complete rest and awakening);
  summer rest period (1-10 days long). In the middle of summer, approximately half of the individuals over the age of 1 fall into a state of rest;
• long summer diapause;
• the second summer diapause, characteristic of insects older than 1 year that have already had time to give birth since the beginning of the season;
• multi-year diapause lasting 1–3 or more years, which allows the insect to wait for favorable conditions for nutrition and reproduction.

The Colorado beetle, which overwintered in the soil, crawls to the surface at temperatures above +10 °C. The first insects to wake up often die due to lack of food. The most viable individuals wake up at a temperature of +13 to +15 °C. This usually happens during the period of dandelion flowering.

Females lay 5–80 eggs per day, 450–1000 per season. Clusters of small (up to 1.8 mm long) eggs, shaped like rice grains, can be easily found on the back of the leaves. At first, the eggs are painted in a rich yellow color, but when the larvae appear, they darken, becoming bright orange.

In a year, 1–2 generations of the beetle develop in the temperate zone, and 2–3 in the southern regions.

The main damage to potatoes is caused by young beetles and larvae of the 3-4th age of the first generation: they cause up to 90% damage to the leaf surface. The beetle hibernates in the soil at the imago stage at a depth of 20-40 cm. The optimal temperature for the development of the pest from an egg to an adult is 24-26 °C, relative humidity - 60-75%. At a temperature below 14 °C, its development slows down, at high temperatures (above 38 °C), the mass death of eggs and larvae begins.

The maximum amount of the pest falls on the period of budding - the flowering of potatoes (the beginning of the laying of tubers) with the mass appearance of larvae of the 3-4th age. Therefore, treatment against the pest is better to be carried out at the time of mass appearance of larvae of the 1st-2nd age, when they are most sensitive to insecticides.

To understand the scale of the disaster when the beetle has already appeared en masse, it is enough to know: only 25 adults completely destroy the tops of one potato bush. On warm days, pests are driven by the wind, capable of flying at a speed of up to 4-8 km/h. Insects are poisonous and have an unpleasant taste. Even birds that can eat them (turkeys, chickens, kingfishers, starlings, crows, sparrows) do so reluctantly.

Methods of protection

Fighting the Colorado beetle is very difficult. There are several methods - agrotechnical, chemical, biological and systemic. All of them are good and acceptable in their own way, but it is best to approach solving the problem comprehensively.

• Crop rotation using crops that are not food for the pest (cereals) is the simplest method, but its effectiveness is questionable. It used to be said that to fight the beetle, you only need to follow crop rotation. That is, if you do not plant potatoes in the same place, you will be able to avoid them getting to another place. But, unfortunately, the beetle flies quite well and perfectly smells the desired product, flies, plans and sees everything where potatoes grow. It easily populates new territories, so it cannot be defeated by crop rotation.
• Also, many gardeners make grooves or gutters in potato gardens with slopes of about 45 degrees - such a trap can collect many beetles, which so far can only move on the surface. But it is also an ineffective and temporary measure.
• Chemical control is the most common among agronomists and is currently considered the simplest and most effective. Most often, seed material is treated with pesticides. Usually these are products with active ingredients - imidacloprid and pencicuron. The pesticide penetrates inside the potato, and after planting, the plant becomes poisonous to the Colorado potato beetle. But the downside of such protection is the accumulation of chemicals in the soil and potatoes, as well as the gradual emergence of resistance in the pest. Similarly, the accumulation of chemicals can be in the fruits of tomatoes and eggplants, if the decay period is long.
• As an alternative to chemical CPP, biological means of plant protection are used. For example, when planting potatoes, tomatoes, and eggplants, you can treat the vegetable garden with soil bioinsecticide MetaRiz™ 10g/10l/100m². It effectively protects the tuber and the barksystem in the soil from wintering individuals. When larvae of the Colorado potato beetle are seen on the vegetative part, this is a signal that you can start treatment with the bioinsecticide Bover IM 10g/10l of water. When adults appear, you can switch to Imexab™ and Bacitoxin, also in an application rate of 10g/10l of water. All these drugs are aimed at destroying all forms of the beetle. Imexab is able to even destroy egg-laying, but for better coverage of plants with the working solution and due to the difficulty of getting to the lower part of the leaf, it is recommended to add Izomax™ adjuvant 2ml/10l to the tank mixture. Due to the natural basis of biological preparations, the effect of accumulation and resistance in the beetle is completely absent.
• You can collect beetles quite effectively by hand if you are patient and follow a few rules. It is necessary to collect methodically every day at a certain time when it is most active - from 10 o'clock in the morning. But we are used to planting potatoes in a small area, and when we walk on it, we step on the space around the bush. And potatoes like loose soil, and we deliberately increase the density of the soil and reduce the yield. If you collect beetles every day, you need to make some kind of technological passages - lay boards, sidewalks. It is impossible to collect a beetle on a large area, so this method is suitable if you have a hundred or a little more.

In general, all these methods of potato protection can be used in the system, and which one to combine with which is up to everyone. We wish you good harvests!