Insecticide receives emergency authorisation for sugar beet
11 May 2021 |
An emergency authorisation has been issued for InSyst on sugar beet
Insecticide Insyst (acetamiprid) has received an emergency authorisation from the government following an application by the NFU and British Sugar.
Sugar beet growers can use one application of Certis’ insecticide InSyst to control peach–potato aphid to prevent virus yellows infection this year.
The application was made jointly by the NFU and British Sugar with technical input from the British Beet Research Organisation (BBRO).
The BBRO said the arrival of peach–potato aphids was anticipated in the third week of May.
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Working with plant breeders to identify tolerance and resistance to virus yellows is a major part of our efforts at the moment. We are increasing those efforts, hand-inoculating almost 100,000 plants at two or three locations in East Anglia to help identify these future tolerant and resistant varieties. We ll take the aphids out in batches and let them feed on plants in the field, then we treat the area to kill them after 48 hours so they don t spread the virus. We can use drones and a range of different cameras to look at symptom development, in addition to ground observations. The plants have been bred with wild relatives of sugar beet which are a good source of different resistance genes. They have been identified over time using conventional breeding methods, to breed them into elite commercial varieties of sugar beet. It can take up to 12 years, so it is not a fast process.
Dr Richard Fox, the associate director of recording and monitoring at Butterfly Conservation, which helped with the research, said: “This decline is worrying because moths play a vital role in our ecosystems.
“They are pollinators of many plants, with some wildflowers, such as orchids, relying on visiting moths for reproduction.
“They also provide essential food for thousands of animal species, including bats and many familiar birds. Because moths are dwindling, we can be pretty sure that other wildlife are also in decline and that our wider environment is deteriorating.”
The Brimstone moth, Opisthograptis luteolata, in Cornwall (Image: GETTY)
The report, also written by Rothamsted Research and the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, is based on tens of millions of records gathered by experts and volunteers. The declines are blamed on human activity, particularly habitat destruction and chemical and light pollution.