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Canada: Vineland working on new super predator to fight pests

Every day in vegetable greenhouses across Canada insects are fighting epic battles best viewed through a magnifying glass: Ladybugs eat aphids; mites eat thrips; parasitic wasps lay an egg inside an aphid that grows and eventually destroys its host.

“It’s just like in the movie Alien,” said Michael Brownbridge, research director of horticultural production systems at Vineland Research and Innovation Centre in the Niagara peninsula in Southwestern Ontario.

Vineland is working with a new predatory mite — a red bug that resembles a tiny spider. Taro Saito, senior research technician for biological control, found the bug, a mite, while he was playing with his son in the garden around his apartment in nearby St. Catharines.

“It is a very active, very voracious predator,” Brownbridge said. “These are the lions of the African plain on greenhouse vegetable leaves. They eat a lot of pests.”

Read more at the Financial Post
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