Average CWRS (13.5%) prices lost C$3.70 to adding C$2.20 per tonne, according to price quotes from a cross-section of delivery points compiled by PDQ (Price and Data Quotes). Those prices ranged from about C$269.00 per tonne in southeastern Saskatchewan to C$290.40 per tonne in southern Alberta.

Quoted basis levels varied from location to location and ranged from C$47.00 to C$68.30 per tonne above the futures when using the grain company methodology of quoting the basis as the difference between the U.S. dollar denominated futures and the Canadian dollar cash bids.

When accounting for currency exchange rates by adjusting Canadian prices to United States dollars (C$1=US$0.7186), CWRS bids ranged from US$193.30 to US$208.70 per tonne. That would put the currency adjusted basis levels at about US$13.40 to US$28.70 below the futures.

Looking at it the other way around, if the Minneapolis futures are converted to Canadian dollars, CWRS basis levels across Western Canada ranged from C$9.60 to C$20.70 below the futures.

Average CPRS (11.5%) wheat tacked on 20 cents to losing $3.50 per tonne. Bids ranged from C$247.30 per tonne in southeastern Saskatchewan to C$272.00 per tonne in southern Alberta.

Average CWAD prices gave up C$1.10 to adding C$0.60 per tonne. Bids ranged from C$322.00 per tonne in northwestern Saskatchewan to C$341.20 per tonne in southern Alberta.

The December spring wheat contract in Minneapolis, which most CWRS contracts Canada are based off of, was quoted at US$6.0425 per bushel on Oct. 31, dropping 13.75 cents on the week.

The Kansas City hard red winter wheat futures, which are now traded in Chicago, are more closely linked to CPRS in Canada. The December Kansas City wheat contract was quoted at US$5.6925 per bushel on Oct. 31, forgoing 17.75 cents from a week ago.

The December Chicago Board of Trade soft wheat contract settled at US$5.7050 per bushel on Oct. 31, losing 11 cents.

The loonie was down 0.37 of a cent on the week, settling at 71.86 U.S. cents.

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Researchers with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and the University of Manitoba are genomically mapping the 2013-released AC Vesper VB spring wheat to understand a trait that appears to repel female wheat midge from laying eggs on the plant.

“(It) seemed to have a different form of oviposition deterrence — which is egg laying deterrence — than other wheat did,” said lead researcher Tyler Wist, who works in the AAFC Saskatoon Research and Development Centre.

“It matched to a different area on the chromosomes, basically.”

The team involved in the “Enhanced surveys, wheat resistance traits and midge genetic variation to preserve the Sm1 gene” project (or, as Wist likes to call them, the Midgebusters) planted a population of Vesper crosses and sent them to AAFC Brandon, where they’re being qualified for midge-deterring traits.

Sm1 is the gene that drives midge tolerance in spring wheat.

If Vesper passes the deterrence test, the next challenge is breeding its traits into a modern spring wheat with today’s expectations.

“Our AAFC wheat breeders would cross-breed so that we get that region that we want — that region that seems to do something interesting against wheat midge — and then cross-breed it into modern wheat that’s got disease resistance and good standability, doesn’t lodge and has Sm1.”

The overarching project is designed to genetically map wheat varieties for midge tolerant traits and develop an understanding of egg-laying deterrence on wheat.

The research is timely because of higher wheat midge pressure this year compared to recent years, said Wist.

A major focus is on extending and expanding the life of the Sm1 midge-resistance gene. The first midge tolerant wheat variety came out 14 years ago, but varieties since then continue to depend on this gene.

The team wants to discover new resistant genes and traits in order to stack them into new varieties, extending the life of Sm1 in the process.

“It’s a single resistance gene and so, if we lose it, then we’re back to spraying. And there’s only one chemical left that’s registered for spraying against wheat midge (dimethoate) and it only kills adults.”

Work in the field

The project involves 150 midge traps set up across Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, baited with female midge pheromones. To date, the traps have captured 38,200 male midges.

That sub-project aims to find a correlation between the pheromone-based method of trapping male midges and the instances of females laying eggs in wheat plants in the field.

“We’re trying to match the pheromone trapping to the emergence of larvae in the heads because, of course, on the pheromone trap, we’re catching males and males don’t lay eggs,” said Wist.

“If we can get some kind of a good correlation between the males that are emerging and we’re catching on traps and actual damage and larval attack in the field, then we’ll have a better idea about what these pheromone traps mean.”

Current scouting knowledge does not have a good guideline for how many plant heads a producer should collect for a representative sample. Researchers are working on that number.

“What my technicians have been doing is dissecting the heads in groups of 10 so that we can say, ‘OK, does this group of 10, does it accurately reflect what we got when we dissected 200?’…(We’re) trying to figure out that best sample size that works for farmers, that works for agronomists and that works for us as scientists, because dissecting 200 heads takes a lot of time.”

Female midges emerge soon after males. Once the males are out, it’s time to start watching the crop.

“The crop staging that’s most susceptible to wheat midge is … as soon as the boot splits up (or as soon as the wheat spike is visible) until the mid-flowering. Then susceptibility drops right off and the larvae don’t do very well after that point,” said Wist.

Gene by gene

Evaluating other genes with suspected midge tolerance traits is another component of the project. One such gene, the egg antibiosis resistance gene, appears to kill wheat midge eggs.

The researchers’ work substantiates that suspicion, but the gene helped the plant kill the insects at a different stage than expected.

“The data looked really convincing, but what we actually wound up finding was that the eggs were laid and the eggs did hatch, but that the larvae died really quickly on those heads,” Wist said.

This effect only occurred if the Sm1 tolerance gene was present along with the egg antibiosis gene.

“Some of the crops that we produced (under the project) had zero wheat midge damage. And then the checks had almost 50 per cent seeds damaged. So the real big difference … is between the ones with these two genes and ones without any genes.”

Mechanical control

Team members investigated mechanical resistance traits in parts of the wheat plant, such as glumes and awns.

A glume is the covering that goes over the seed and covers the spikelet. Glumes with hair on them initially appeared to change the egg-laying behaviour of the female wheat midge, said Wist.

“And so, instead of putting her eggs underneath the glumes, she was actually putting them on top of the glumes, because I don’t think she could get underneath the glumes with all of the little spikes that were on there.”

However, hairy glumes did not reduce kernel damage.

“Probably what was going on there was the midge larvae were maneuverable enough that they could get themselves … under the wheat kernel and still cause their wheat midge damage. So that was unfortunate.”

An experiment with the awns of wheat plants also revealed few midge-repelling effects.

“Most wheat has awns, but there’s some evidence that awns will stop flying insects or deter flying insects from landing on the plant,” said Wist.

“So we were trying to evaluate that with wheat midge as well, and it didn’t have much of an effect itself, but even a small effect is better than nothing, especially if awns are already on most of the wheat that we’ve got in our cropping area anyway.”

This research is part of a co-operative project between scientists from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada research centres in Swift Current, Brandon and Morden, as well as the University of Manitoba. It’s funded by the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership.

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Wheat midges overwinter in the soil as fairly mature larvae and emerge as adults when the crop is heading, said John Gavloski, an entomologist with Manitoba Agriculture.

“Now, if you have your crop in early, it may already have headed before the wheat midge will come out,” he said in a Manitoba Crop Talk webinar earlier this month.

Why it matters: Conditions favourable to wheat midge development should prompt farmers to closely monitor fields.

Wheat midges have a four-stage life cycle. Adults are tiny, fragile orange flies about half the size of mosquitoes, with three pairs of legs and oval-shaped wings. During the day, they stay within the crop canopy to take advantage of humid conditions. In the evening, female wheat midges each lay about 80 eggs on newly emerged heads of wheat.

Recent dry spring conditions pushed wheat midge into its dormant stage as larvae in the soil, called extended diapause. They can stay in that stage over summer and until the next season as they await favourable moisture conditions.

“We’ve had good soil moisture so we don’t expect [wheat] midge should be in any extended diapause mode, so what’s there will probably emerge,” Gavloski said. “How many is another question. We’ll have to wait and see.”

In the past, wheat midge has caused serious damage to wheat crops throughout the northern plains, including Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Minnesota, North Dakota and British Columbia. Nearly all wheat varieties are at risk, although 36 newer midge tolerant varieties of wheat are available in eight different classes of wheat.

Wheat midges damage crops by feeding on the surface of developing kernels as larvae, which reduces crop yields and can also lower the grade of harvested grain. The Canadian Grain Commission sets thresholds for midge damage in No. 1 CWRS and No. 2 CWRS at two per cent and five per cent, respectively, before it impacts grade.

Midge damage can be mistaken for frost or drought damage. Damage from wheat midge secretions, which convert starch to sugar, can be seen in shriveled or aborted kernels. Some damaged kernels will become so small that they get lost as chaff during harvest.

Manitoba Agriculture recommends that fields be inspected often from when the wheat heads emerge from the boot until anthers can be seen.

The best time to monitor is 75 minutes before sunset to 30 minutes after sunset, when the female midges are busiest laying their eggs, and when temperatures are above 15 C and wind speed is less than 10 km/h. Populations of wheat midge can be approximated by counting the number of adults on four to five wheat heads in at least three or four locations.

Producers can also check for wheat midge using sticky traps. Yellow sticky cards measuring 75 x 125 millimetres can be put on stakes that are as high as the wheat spikes. They should be placed at 10 metre intervals and collected after three evenings in the field. Usually, three or four wheat midges per 10 traps is a sign to act against the pest.

A more advanced way of scouting involves pheromone lures that attract male wheat midges.

Nature also provides ways to deal with wheat midge, Gavloski said.

“There are predators and parasites of wheat midge. The parasites are probably the most effective means of natural control, but there are predators.”

Among those predators are beetles in the carabidae family. They feed on wheat midge larvae when they’re still in the soil. Fourteen species of ground beetles have been found to feed on wheat midge larvae, with daily predation rates ranging from less than one to 86 per square mile, studies from Saskatchewan show.

The Saskatchewan agriculture department recently highlighted the way certain parasitic wasps help keep wheat midges at bay by laying eggs inside wheat midge eggs. Since the eggs hatch at around the same time, the wasps grow inside the wheat midge larva.

Insecticides are recommended to combat wheat midge only when the crop’s economic threshold has been reached but before the crop has flowered.

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The Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture’s wheat midge forecast, released earlier this year, initially showed high risk levels for the insect, but the dryness is hampering their effects on crops.

“Dr. Bob Elliott’s work at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada has shown that if you don’t get 25 mm of precipitation prior to the end of May, it will affect wheat midge emergence,” provincial insect specialist Scott Hartley said.

“Although some areas did, like down in southeast Saskatchewan was probably one area that did, there are a number of areas that didn’t — it’s just been that dry.”

Wheat midge populations need moisture by the end of May to trigger them to go into their pupal stage, so the dryness results in later, more erratic emergence.

Crop development in Western Canada this year has also varied widely along with weather conditions, which has lowered the crops’ susceptibly to midge damage.

“There’s either some that might have grown out of the stage before midge emerged, others that went through that stage fairly quickly, and other ones probably weren’t even into the susceptible stage by the time midge were emerging,” Hartley said.

As of last Saturday (July 12), wheat midge populations were about 50 to 90 per cent emerged in most of Western Canada, according to a weekly report from the Prairie Pest Monitoring Network.

Even in the regions that got moisture in late May, such as Manitoba and southeastern Saskatchewan, significant damage from the insect hasn’t been reported, according to weekly provincial crop updates.

We’re now coming to the end of wheat midge season, Alberta’s provincial insect management specialist Scott Meers said in a weekly insect update on Thursday, so the chance of the problem getting worse in coming weeks is diminishing.

— Terryn Shiells writes for Commodity News Service Canada, a Winnipeg company specializing in grain and commodity market reporting.

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Grasshopper forecast maps put out over the winter were not initially all that bad for Alberta and Saskatchewan, given the conditions in 2014, but weather in the spring and summer can alter the situation considerably.

“The fall survey did not pick up any really high numbers of grasshoppers… nothing that we would consider high risk for most crops,” said Scott Hartley, insect control specialist with Saskatchewan Agriculture.

However, weather conditions now “are ideal for grasshoppers,” he said.

An extended fall in 2014 also allowed for high numbers of eggs, which have been hatching since late May, said Hartley. Grasshoppers were now becoming more mobile, he added, and producers should be monitoring their fields — especially in areas that are warm and dry.

While growing conditions for crops have been slow, “there is certainly enough plant growth for them to eat,” said Hartley.

Cool and wet weather would slow them down, but Hartley said a widespread event that would be detrimental for grasshoppers was unlikely and would also cause more significant crop problems for other reasons.

There are five immature stages leading up to an adult grasshopper, with grasshoppers in the third to fifth stages causing the most problems for crops, depending on how far along the fields are.

While the dryness is raising concerns over grasshoppers, it has slowed the development of wheat midge in those dry areas, as that pest needs a certain amount of moisture, said Hartley.

However, the southeastern corner of Saskatchewan has been on the wet side in recent years, and midge is poised to cause more problems in that area.

— Phil Franz-Warkentin writes for Commodity News Service Canada, a Winnipeg company specializing in grain and commodity market reporting.

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“For cabbage seedpod weevil, the survey from last year was showing that it’s extended well eastwards (in Saskatchewan) with some pretty good numbers now moving more into traditional widespread canola growing regions,” said Scott Hartley, insect specialist with the Saskatchewan agriculture ministry in Regina.

In Alberta, the weevil is also expanding to new areas. The weevil’s northern extent pushed to the southern boundaries of Red Deer, Stettler, Paintearth and Provost counties in 2014, according to the province’s 2015 cabbage seedpod weevil forecast.

Farmers who had high populations of cabbage seedpod weevil last year may choose to plant a different crop in 2015 to avoid damage from the pest, Hartley said. They can also be controlled through insecticides if necessary, he added.

Farmers in Western Canada will also have to watch out for wheat midge this growing season. In Saskatchewan, midge had a good year in 2014, which could lead to more problems in 2015.

“There were large numbers of (wheat midge) cocoons that showed up in the soil survey,” Hartley said, adding they will likely survive the winter.

Though midge populations in the eastern Peace region of Alberta are generally expected to drop this year, there is still a risk of higher populations in the province, the provincial forecast said.

The best thing farmers can do to prevent damage from any insect is regular monitoring in fields, though there are also midge-tolerant wheat varieties available.

Though last year’s higher populations point to possible issues with the two insects in parts of the Prairies, the main factor in their potential impact this year will be spring weather conditions.

A cool, wet spring could cause some mortalities among both pests, and would likely cause them to develop and emerge at a slower than normal pace, Hartley said.

— Terryn Shiells writes for Commodity News Service Canada, a Winnipeg company specializing in grain and commodity market reporting.

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But there is still a risk of higher populations in the region due to the very large levels of the insect population seen during the 2013 crop year, the report said

Wheat midge has not followed previous forecasts very well in the Peace region, the report added.

A general increase in risk of damage from wheat midge is seen in central Alberta for 2015, with the area east of Edmonton seeing the most concerns at this point.

Populations of the insect are expected to fall to very low numbers in much of southern Alberta, the report added.

Producers should note how much midge-related damage was done to this year’s wheat crop as an indicator of the risk of damage to the 2015-16 wheat crop, the report said.

The past several years have seen midge damage vary widely, especially in areas with higher counts.

The report emphasized it isn’t meant to take the place of individual field monitoring, and farmers may still have economic-threshold levels of midge this year in areas where smaller populations are expected.

Each producer also needs to assess his or her risk based on indicators specific to the individual farm.

A number of factors influence the overwintering survival of the wheat midge; the survey provides a general picture of existing densities and the potential for infestation in 2015.

Weather conditions — specifically temperature and moisture — will ultimately determine the extent and timing of midge emergence during the growing season.

Temperature and wind also play critical roles in egg-laying activities of the adult female wheat midge. The level of damage from wheat midge is determined by the synchrony of wheat midge emergence and wheat coupled with the number of wheat midge, the report added.

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