Aphid AVENGERS: A natural-born superhero is in your soybean fields.

摘要

Those swarms of soybean aphids that show up this time of year are in for a big surprise. Armies of tiny wasps now wait to eat them for lunch.Native to China, populations of these natural predators are arriving in North America in numbers large enough to potentially reduce the need for insecticide applications. Although some fields will still have more aphids than their enemies can attack anddestroy, what these wasps attempt to achieve is nothing short of heroic."We see significant soybean aphid control by a combination of natural enemies and only see a few fields with later infestations that require spraying," says Tracey Baute, entomologist for the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture.