We found that the wheat bulb fly has some strange habits. It is very fussy about what it eats and what size its food is, it lays its eggs in bare soil and it often kills it's host plant

Charles Marriot PhD student

He said: "To develop alternatives to pesticides we have to understand the biology of the pest.

"This is done by examining their natural environment away from the artificial environment we create in the fields.

"There are increasing fears about the health and environmental risks involved with organophosphates.

"They are also not very selective and can kill beneficial insects such as beetles which eat crop pests."

Mr Marriot added: "We found that the wheat bulb fly has some strange habits. It is very fussy about what it eats and what size its food is, it lays its eggs in bare soil and it often kills it's host plant. "

'More research needed'

He explained that WBF larvae are more attracted to couch seedling than to wheat seedling.

Mr Marriot hopes to expand his research and said scientists now need to discover what chemicals the larva is attracted to and to use those attractants, either in the wheat seedling itself or as a granular decoy in the soil.

"If we can now identify the chemical responsible for attracting the larva to couch seedling we can use those chemicals either to improve the effectiveness of existing pesticides or possibly to eliminate them all together," he said.

"Much more research has to be done, but one less hazardous chemical, tefluthrin, is used against WBF and is applied to the seed before the crop is sewn.

"This means you don't have to spray large areas and you are using a relatively low dosage of pesticide."