General enquiries on this form should be made to: Defra, Procurements and Contracts Division (Science R&D Team) Telephone No. 0207 238 5734 E-mail: [email protected] SID 5 Research Project Final Report Note In line with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, Defra aims to place the results Project identification of its completed research projects in the public domain wherever possible. The PS2113 SID 5 (Research Project Final Report) is 1. Defra Project code designed to capture the information on the results and outputs of Defra-funded 2. Project title research in a format that is easily A framework for the practical application of publishable through the Defra website. A semiochemicals in field crops SID 5 must be completed for all projects. This form is in Word format and the boxes may be expanded or reduced, as 3. Contractor Rothamsted Research appropriate. organisation(s) ACCESS TO INFORMATION The information collected on this form will be stored electronically and may be sent to any part of Defra, or to individual researchers or organisations outside Defra for the purposes of reviewing the 54. Total Defra project costs £ 422,765 project. Defra may also disclose the (agreed fixed price) information to any outside organisation acting as an agent authorised by Defra to 01 April 2006 process final research reports on its 5. Project: start date ................ behalf. Defra intends to publish this form on its website, unless there are strong end date ................. 15 May 2010 reasons not to, which fully comply with exemptions under the Environmental Information Regulations or the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Defra may be required to release information, including personal data and commercial information, on request under the Environmental Information Regulations or the Freedom of Information Act 2000. However, Defra will not permit any unwarranted breach of confidentiality or act in contravention of its obligations under the Data Protection Act 1998. Defra or its appointed agents may use the name, address or other details on your form to contact you in connection with occasional customer research aimed at improving the processes through which Defra works with its contractors. SID 5 (Rev. 05/09) Page 1 of 24 6. It is Defra‟s intention to publish this form. Please confirm your agreement to do so. ................................................................................... YES NO (a) When preparing SID 5s contractors should bear in mind that Defra intends that they be made public. They should be written in a clear and concise manner and represent a full account of the research project which someone not closely associated with the project can follow. Defra recognises that in a small minority of cases there may be information, such as intellectual property or commercially confidential data, used in or generated by the research project, which should not be disclosed. In these cases, such information should be detailed in a separate annex (not to be published) so that the SID 5 can be placed in the public domain. Where it is impossible to complete the Final Report without including references to any sensitive or confidential data, the information should be included and section (b) completed. NB: only in exceptional circumstances will Defra expect contractors to give a "No" answer. In all cases, reasons for withholding information must be fully in line with exemptions under the Environmental Information Regulations or the Freedom of Information Act 2000. (b) If you have answered NO, please explain why the Final report should not be released into public domain Executive Summary 7. The executive summary must not exceed 2 sides in total of A4 and should be understandable to the intelligent non-scientist. It should cover the main objectives, methods and findings of the research, together with any other significant events and options for new work. The main objective of this project was to develop a framework for the practical control of insects in the key combinable crops used in arable rotations, i.e., cereals, oilseed rape and legumes, based on semiochemicals. These are volatile non-toxic insect-produced (pheromones) or plant-produced chemicals that act as information signals between organisms and cause behaviour changes in the recipient. As such, they can be used to manipulate the distribution of both pest and beneficial populations and have the potential to reduce the need for toxicant insecticides in pest management. The objective was addressed by two sub-objectives, one focused on developing a semiochemical based management strategy for oilseed rape and the other to develop this approach for cereal and legume cropping systems utilizing Defra-recommended field margin mixtures. Devise and test a semiochemical based management strategy for pests of oilseed rape This sub objective was addressed by five, replicated field experiments conducted in years 1-3 of the project, and by an additional 3 experiments in an extension year. The overall aim was to develop and test a „push-pull‟ strategy for oilseed rape (OSR). In such a strategy, the main crop is made as unattractive as possible to pests through the use of less attractive cultivars and repellents („push‟) while simultaneously, attractive trap crops are used to deter pests from colonizing the main crop and to concentrate them in the trap crop area where they can be more easily controlled („pull‟). In our previous work (PI0340 and PS2107) we demonstrated in a model spring cropping system that turnip rape (Brassica rapa) was more attractive to several insect pests of OSR than was the crop itself, and that a trap crop border of turnip rape could reduce pest populations in the main crop to below spray threshold levels. In the project reported here, we scaled-up field experiments from the relatively small plots (30 x 30 m) used in previous experiments to a more realistic whole-field scale. Six, 1ha crops of spring OSR three with a 9m-wide turnip rape trap crop bordering the crop and three without a trap crop, were sown in separate fields, with each at least 500m from any other treatment or OSR crop. Adult pests were sampled at regular intervals on plants selected at random in the centres and borders of each plot from the green bud stage to full-flowering. Unfortunately, two out of the three replicates without the trap crop failed to establish, so statistical power was limited for comparisons. However, it was clear that pollen beetles, Meligethes aeneus, were more attracted to the turnip rape than the OSR plants in the border, and at the damage susceptible stage of the main crop the trap crop reduced the number of beetles per plant in the main crop compared with plots without a TR trap crop. The trap cropping strategy using the model spring OSR cropping system was successfully transferred to the winter OSR cropping system. Nine different oilseed/turnip rape lines were compared in a replicated field experiment and adult pest infestation was sampled through the growing season. Pasja fodder turnip rape was significantly more attractive than any other line tested, and flowered early, thereby showing good SID 5 (Rev. 05/09) Page 2 of 24 potential as a trap crop. Two OSR cultivars, Grizzly (late-flowering) and Cheops (white-petalled), showed potential for use as a main crop as they were less preferred by pollen beetles than other lines in the study. These were further tested in a replicated field experiment (30 x 30 m plots) both with and without a Pasja turnip rape trap crop. Plants were randomly sampled from both the borders and centres of plots throughout the bud-flowering phase of the crop. Pasja turnip rape plants were significantly more infested than OSR plants in the plot borders. This supports our results from the screening trials and indicates that Pasja turnip rape is more attractive than oilseed rape to pests – a requirement for an efficient trap crop. Furthermore the experiment showed that Pasja performed effectively as a trap crop when the main crop was the late-flowering OSR cv. Grizzly. Numbers of beetles were significantly lower in the main crop of plots with a trap crop than in plots without a trap crop. However, this was not the case when the main crop was Cheops, possibly because it flowered earlier than Grizzly. Similar results were gained from a preliminary experiment which scaled up the trap cropping strategy for winter OSR to more realistic field scales (fields of 1ha OSR cv. Grizzly with or without 9m-wide trap crop borders of Pasja turnip rape). It was also found in these large-scale experiments that application of insecticide to the trap crop further improves its efficacy. We conclude that the trap cropping strategy can reduce to below spray threshold the numbers of pollen beetles in crops of OSR and holds great potential to reduce the number of sprays required to control the pest and as a tool in insecticide resistance management for OSR pests. We suggest that further experiments would be required to ensure that the same sized trap crops still work when field size is 10-100ha, as more commonly found in the UK. In our previous work in PS2107 we identified lavender essential oil as a potential repellent against pollen beetle to use as the „push‟ element in the push-pull strategy. In the work reported here, a slow-release spray formulation was developed using gum acacia as a base. In laboratory experiments, an effective rate was determined (4l lavender oil + 40ml Ethylan BV and 6kg gum acacia in 200l water/ha) and the periodicity over which it was likely to be effective was determined (24h). The most effective number of applications was determined in replicated field trials on winter OSR. The lavender significantly reduced the infestation of pollen beetles on treated plots compared with untreated controls and two applications were significantly more effective than one.