Wheat fields needed for 2025 western summer pest surveys and invasive insect updates

Anthony Hanson, Extension Educator - Field Crops Integrated Pest Management (hans4022@umn.edu)

 Angie Peltier, Extension Educator - Field Crops

 Jochum Wiersma, Extension small grains specialist 

 

Since 2011, University Minnesota Extension has conducted a small grains pest and disease field survey in western Minnesota as part of a collaboration with North Dakota State University. This effort has been funded by the Minnesota Wheat Research and Promotion Council through wheat check-off dollars to inform producers and the research community of the presence of disease and pests (Fig. 1).

Figure 1. Cereal leaf beetle larvae feeding on a wheat leaf. Larvae carry their frass (i.e., feces) on their back to protect against predators. This gives larvae a slimy, black and sometimes striped appearance. Photo: Anthony Hanson – University of Minnesota Extension IPM.

Through this program, UMN Extension gives individual alerts to growers and uses the scouting data to contribute to weekly pest population maps that are produced jointly with NDSU's scouting program (Fig. 2). The success of this program relies heavily on wheat fields being volunteered by growers for UMN scouts to check during the growing season, and we are hoping to expand the reach of this survey in 2025.

 

Figure 2. Disease incidence of wheat tan spot in 2024 in Minnesota and North Dakota

 

Rather than relying on random fields to sample for insects and diseases, we plan to visit only small grains fields that have been volunteered, and we have written permission to scout. If you would like to volunteer a field to contribute to these maps and get pest data sent to you, please visit: https://z.umn.edu/wheatipm2025.

 

Typically, three scouts check fields weekly centered around Crookston, Moorhead, and Morris so we can cover a continuous range of fields through the northwest and west-central areas of the state. As a rough rule of thumb, scouts may visit fields that are within a 1.5 hours drive of these locations, though they may be able to travel farther depending on the number of sites submitted in that location. If you also provide an email address, you will get weekly updates from late May through the beginning of July on the insect and disease data found in your fields. Coordinates and data from your field will be kept anonymous and will be not be identifiable beyond the scale seen in Fig. 2.

Scouts also cover soybean fields that are sampled randomly with support from the Minnesota Soybean Research & Promotion Council. This especially helps as small grain scouting needs decline during the season and soybean pest populations build.

During the last couple years of this survey, cereal leaf beetle first-time detections in northwestern Minnesota have been especially concerning since many of these fields had high enough populations to cause economic yield loss. The first fields in 2023 were found by UMN scouts in Clay, Norman, Mahnomen, and Red Lake counties followed by additional finds in Marshall, Pennington, Otter Tail, and Grant counties in 2024 (Fig. 3). Prior to this, cereal leaf beetle had not been found in the survey in western Minnesota and had only been found in southeastern counties prior to 2010 in low numbers. During a statewide MN Dept. of Ag. 2010 survey, cereal leaf beetle was only found in Goodhue County. It's unknown why this insect has not been found in central counties yet, so volunteered fields from areas where there gaps in this survey including south of Grant County and around Otter Tail and Stearns counties would be especially helpful.

 

Figure 3. Cereal leaf beetle finds in Minnesota since 2010. 2023-24 finds are the first county detections found by UMN scouts.

In areas where many fields are submitted, we will select a subset of all submitted fields such that we have a good representation across the region. We will inform you if one of your fields has been selected. The anonymous data will be used to generate the weekly pest, and disease updates in cooperation with NDSU. If you provide an email at submission, we will alert you to any pest issues found in your field. Feel free to submit a planned location even if the field hasn't been planted yet, and we can follow up if there are changes to plans in that field.

If you would like to view past joint pest maps with UMN and NDSU, visit: https://z.umn.edu/mn-ndsu-wheatipm.

Thank you for considering this request. Simply follow the link at the bottom to a Google Form to submit your field:

Small Grains Field Submission Form