Cover Cropping for Flea Beetle Management

This trial is conducted in collaboration with University of Manitoba (Lawley Lab) and is completing a small plot experiment looking at fall rye and oat nurse cover crops on their ability to aid in flea beetle management of canola.

Research Question: Does using a spring planted cereal nurse cover crop with canola reduces early season flea beetle damage compared to a farm’s standard practice for growing canola?

Treatments:

1. Cereal nurse cover crop seeded in the seed row with canola at planting and terminated using a herbicide when canola reaches the 2 leaf stage.
2. Control treatment following the farmer’s standard practice for growing canola.

Trial Setup: Four replicates of alternating treatments in full length field strips.

Data Collection: Weekly flea beetle presence and damage until 3 leaf stage, weekly natural enemy sampling, canola plant counts, nurse crop plant stand counts, grain yield.

*Data is being processed, stay tuned for results!*