Islander produces trap to prevent potato-eating wireworm

An Islander has heeded the call to mass manufacture a trap to fight P.E.I.'s wireworm pest.

Ralph Yeo said he decided to start producing the wire trap after reading about its invention about a year ago.

Christine Noronha, an Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada entomologist, had created the trap and trademarked it in early 2016, but needed someone to manufacture it.

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Yeo, who until now ran a landscaping business, said he and a few others decided to follow up with Noronha.

"We were pretty intrigued by, it and certainly saw the need," he said.

Trap captures click beetle

Wirewormsare beetle larvae thatdig holes in potatoes as they grow, making them unfit for sale.

The P.E.I. Potato Board said the worms are a problem across the country, although they are worst in P.E.I., Alberta and B.C.

The trap to stop them is called the Noronha Elaterid Light Trap, or NELT. It's consists of a small solar-powered spotlight, a white plastic cup, and a piece of screening to keep out bigger insects that could clog up the trap.

Yeo said the trap doesn't actually capture the worm but its adult phase, the click beetle.

Worms hide until spring

Yeo said the worms remain underground during the winter until the earth warms up in the spring.

They emerge and turn into the adult beetle, which start to mate and produce eggs within a few weeks.

The trap is meant to catch the beetles during that time, he said.

It attracts the beetles with its light, and once the insect climbs inside the wire mesh, it can't get out anymore, he said.

"So the idea is to have them all intercepted and in that cup before the egg laying commences," he said.

Move to world-wide market

Yeo hopes to sell about 5,000 traps in 2017 and eventually expand his businessworld-wide.

The traps now cost around $30, and farmers need about three traps per acre to catch enoughclick beetles to be effective in controlling the pest, he said.

"I think the really big market eventually will be the home garden market," he said.

"But I'm not limiting any area ...Click beetles existin all areas of the world."

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