Lygus bugs in Canola

[jhurt]

I have been scouting our canola fields for lygus bugs. There is a high count of 40 -45 mature and 20 - 30 young lygus bugs. The pods are sticky and you can see marks on some of the pods where they have fed. However their is a lot of pods that you open that all the seed is brown and shriveled up with no signs of any feeding on the outside of the pods. It looks like 75% or more of the seed is gone. After the drought we got some snow and the temperature was done to 0 celius that night but their is no signs of frost in yards or gardens. Do you think this is a bad case of lygus bugs that should have been sprayed earlier or is there a frost problem. Other farmers in the area have just started spraying in the last 2 or 3 days. There is another Crossfield area farmer that has this problem too. He is silaging some of his canola and looks like we should do the same. Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated. Jim.

[mhartman]

The 75% brown, shrivelling seed you described is severe, and is likely a combination of lygus bug damage and drought. The light frost you mentioned will not likely have caused the extensive seed shrivelling but could cause green seed problems in any viable seed left! So, if your estimate of 75% seed shrivelling is accurate, it sounds like silaging may be a good strategy to salvage something! Just take a nitrate test since many canola crops being salvaged for feed in the drought area have been testing high.