00:00They may have a humorous name, but for WA farmers, the cockchafer pest is no laughing matter.
00:10Definitely not for us, obviously it's costing us every year really, to varying degrees.
00:17The grub is responsible for increasing cases of crop damage in south-east WA.
00:23When they first get attacked, I suppose, the plant itself will go yellow and then as it's losing nutrition and moisture, obviously the plant dies and they actually fall over onto the ground flat.
00:37So the cockchafer is also referred to as a curl grub.
00:41And what they do is they feed on plant roots like this one underground, making it notoriously difficult for farmers to control.
00:50It's leaving a lot of growers here in the Lakes District, like Tom, scratching their heads over what to do next.
00:56Because right now, there is no solution in sight.
00:59Trials for a variety of potential solutions are underway on this farm, where the pest caused extensive damage last year.
01:08So last year I would have estimated somewhere between 30 and 50 hectares of an entire, like, complete wipeout.
01:14It seems that we're seeing it in, it sort of doesn't discriminate between crop type.
01:19The paddock trials are backed by funding from the Council of Grain Growers.
01:23Whereas we're trying to find something that growers can use, well, next year, this year, as soon as we can.
01:29The Department of Primary Industries and the Grain Research Development Corporation have also teamed up to deliver practical tools against the cockchafer.
01:40What we want to find out is what species are we dealing with, how many species are there, and really how can we manage these and prevent crop loss in the future.
01:50A crop loss problem farmers urgently need answers to.
01:54A crop loss problem
02:10suo
Comments