Some Ontario wineries say the recent discovery of an invasive species of insect in the province is “extremely dangerous” to the industry and could have a “devastating impact.”
Known as the spotted lanternfly, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said it was contacted last month after a St. Catharines, Ont., resident found a dead member of the species.
After an inspection, it collected 12 dead spotted lanternflies in an imported shipment of planting pots from the United States.
“It can have a devastating impact,” said Norman Beal, president of the Peninsula Ridge Estates Winery and board chair of Ontario Craft Wineries. “They can get into your vineyard, they burrow into the trunks of vines, lay their larvae and their eggs and then become a major, major problem to vineyard mortality.”b
The destructive insect, which is native to Asia, has already spread and wreaked havoc on 19 U.S. states since first detected in North America in 2014.
Its danger lies in the fact it can feed on more than 100 species of trees and plants.
“(The) spotted lanternfly is a sap sucker and it relies on sugars and the amino acids found in those sugars for its life cycle and for its survival,” said Diana Mooij, technical lead for spotted lanternflies at the CFIA. She is also a program specialist with the invasive alien species, grain and oilseeds section at the CFIA.
Though it is still not known to be present in Canada, according to the CFIA, it still poses a “significant” threat to the grape, tree fruit, wine and ornamental nursery industries.
U.S. grapes and grapevines have been among the hardest hit.
Mooij said the sugars found in grapes are an excellent source of sugar and the amino acids.
“There can be yield losses, for sure, up to 90 per cent and, even in extreme cases, there have been death of vines,” Mooij said of U.S. infestations.
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A 2019 study from Pennsylvania State University found at the time the expected impact from the insect in the “quarantine zone” in the state was currently estimated at about US$50.1 million per year, with a loss of about 484 jobs. It notes in a worst-case scenario, those amounts would increase to $554 million and about 5,000 lost jobs.
The insect is an “imminent” threat to Canada, though Mooij said it is not confirmed to be detected yet. Such a detection would be when the CFIA confirms a live spotted lanternfly in the environment.
A primary concern with the bug is how it travels, with it being called a “hitchhiker.”
“They’re amazing hitchikers,” said Amanda Roe, a research scientist at the Great Lakes Forestry Centre with Natural Resources Canada. “So they can get onto vehicles and into camping gear and they move very easily with the things that people like to move.”
Roe added the flies like smooth surfaces to lay their eggs, items that are moved around often allowing for an infestation to occur — the insect’s egg mass has about 40 to 50 individual bugs.
Though wineries have suggested colder temperatures could hamper the insects as they do other invasive species, Roe said research by Natural Resources Canada has found the insects to be quite cold tolerant.
“Our first paper showed that they could survive up to -25 C in a very short period of time and even longer exposures at -20 or -15 C. So that’s fairly significant amounts of winter, particularly in the areas where you might be interested in growing grapes,” said Roe. “It (winter) won’t serve as a barrier to their spread into Canada.”
While they’ve not been detected yet, Canadians are urged that if they spot the bugs with stark black and white wings and bright red and yellow undersides to take a photo or video, try and catch it, and report it to the CFIA. The babies are black with white spots or black, white and red with white spots.
Ontario’s Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Agribusiness reiterated the importance of reporting in a statement, adding it’s working with the CFIA and industries on surveillance in high-risk areas and response planning.
Moe added it’s likely the insects are “probably already here.”
It’s why Beal says work is constantly being done on how people can treat their crops when the insects are detected to avoid loss of product, such as sprays.
“This is an invasive species. They don’t recognize borders, so we can tell them to stay out of Canada, but I don’t think they’ll listen,” Beal said.
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