This Sask. lab is studying agricultural pests — even before they arrive on the Prairies
Climate change could mean more insect species call Canada home
Sean Prager swipes his key card and opens two sets of doors leading to a quarantined room inside the agriculture building at the University of Saskatchewan.
Inside, Prager — a U of S associate professor and entomologist — walks through the darkly lit, red light-illuminated room to a series of industrial refrigerators humming away. Insects fill transparent containers inside the refrigerators, munching away on different types of crops.
Outside this climate-controlled space, students work on various projects related to the insects, measuring their eating habits and even cutting them open to study what's inside.
The rooms — and the research going on inside them — are part of the school's new Insect Research Facility, which opened in April. It's the only facility of its kind at a university in Western Canada.
A big part of the research at the facility involves understanding how to prevent pests that aren't in Canada yet from coming here.
"A lot of what we try to worry about are things that you start seeing in other places," said Prager, who heads up the lab.
"So if something starts showing up in, say, North Dakota or Montana or the Great Plains of the U.S., often that's a harbinger of what's going to be here."
Prager and his research team seek out those outside pests and bring them into their quarantined space. They pair the insects with different crops to see how the insects interact with them.
"Say we have this variety of canola or lentil or something that we grow here," Prager said. "Will this insect from Morocco or … from the United States that's a problem on lentils be a problem on the varieties we grow?"
That research could help the team predict future pest outbreaks and even develop pest-resistant crops.
Climate change could bring pests
As the planet warms due to climate change, more insect pests could show up on the Prairies and across the country, according to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.
One example the agency has studied is the brown marmorated stink bug, which eats numerous crops, including fruit.
Research shows the average dates of the yearly peak occurrence of this bug in Quebec could be as early as late July within the next 20 to 50 years.
That's compared to no average date of yearly peak occurrence for the period between 1981 and 2010, as the bug wasn't discovered in Canada until 2010.
James Tansey, Saskatchewan's provincial entomologist, says grasshoppers — a common prairie insect pest — could be affected by climate change as well.
That's because fall frosts and frigid winters usually kill off the insects.
"So reduced mortality of those eggs [means] we could see increased grasshopper populations," said Tansey. "We could see the expansion of range of some of the pest species that occur in the United States."
Tansey and fellow entomologists in other provinces have released a list of species not yet found on the Prairies. They encourage people to keep an eye out and report any insects on the list they come across.
Real-world applications
Dayna Elliott, an agronomist who lives near Elrose, has seen her fair share of grasshoppers this year.
Elliott's work has taken her to fields with throngs of them — eating everything in sight.
"We've seen weather and pest population issues before, but nothing like we've seen this year," she said.
She's not alone. Several rural municipalities in Saskatchewan have declared agricultural disasters, in part due to widespread grasshoppers.
But Elliott is encouraged by the opening of the Insect Research Facility. She's not only hopeful for what work will be done on grasshoppers, but also all types of insect pests she encounters in her work.
"If they can have those pests in this quarantined lab [and] they can find out the control options for them, what the impacts even are on our ecosystem here in Canada, then we can be prepared to take action on them as producers and not lose that yield," said Elliott.
Prager says other insect research facilities like his are usually government-run. Having one in a university allows better access for students wanting to learn.
"We can show them how to do research they couldn't otherwise do and they're the people that you're going to let loose into the world to solve the problems."
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