Entomophaga grylli is a stealthy Prairie pathogen that preys on grasshoppers in horror movie style. Can its deadly power be harnessed as a bio-pesticide?

Those orange and red, blob-like areas on insect survey maps are a farmer’s cue to action. Fields seeded with certain crops and located in and around these hotspots may require individual assessment and population control. Among cereal farmers, the most anticipated of these maps are those for grasshoppers, wheat stem sawfly and wheat midge.

It came without warning. Prairie farmers were dealt the environmental version of poker’s 7-2 off-suit: drought conditions not seen in 20-plus years and a heat dome, which may become agriculture’s word of the year for all the wrong reasons.

Meghan Vankosky is a field crop entomologist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada at the Saskatoon Research and Development Centre.

Grasshoppers are known to inhabit areas that receive less than 700 millimetres of rainfall per year, which includes Alberta.