Insect-sniffing dog helps Leamington, Ont. hothouse stay pest-free

Last year, a little pest known as a peppers weevil destroyed bell peppers crops all over Leamington, Ont., baffling harassment control managers and farmers alike.

This year, a staff during NatureFresh Farms motionless to do something odd to quarrel a problem — they got a dog. 

“Chili is a newest member of a scouting team… she’s a purebred operative dog lerned to find peppers weevil,” pronounced Cam Lyons, an integrated harassment government director during NatureFresh. “As distant as we know, she’s a usually one in a universe looking for this harassment in a greenhouse.”

Chili is a noisy two-year-old Belgian Shepherd who was bred in Mexico. She’s been on a pursuit during a hothouse given July, and her usually goal is to find a little pests that can hurt an whole crop. 

Chili, a two-year-old Belgium Shepard dog from Mexico, has a nose that can find a little peppers weevil harassment that can hurt whole crops. (Melissa Nakhavoly/CBC)

“It’s a really severe pest… we didn’t have a lot of options,” pronounced Lyons, who explained a harassment is intensely formidable to exterminate regulating normal methods. He pronounced a womanlike insect lays eggs on tip of a peppers that afterwards induce and feed on a fruit, eventually murdering it. 

That’s where Chili comes in. 

“We start on a outward of a hothouse actually, I’ll take her and we’ll hunt a fringe of a greenhouses,” pronounced Tina Heide, a biological director during NatureFresh and Chili’s handler. “I’ll have her spot out walls, spot a floors, we do skids like make-up crates, boxes anything we come across.”

Heide said that Chili takes a lot of breaks during her time acid for pests, so that she doesn’t get sleepy or overheat.

Daily games of hide-and-seek

So distant this year, NatureFresh hasn’t had any peppers weevils in their crops so Heide hides vials of a pests around to keep Chili’s nose in a game. 

“We don’t know when these things are going to come, where they’ll hit,” she said. “That’s because we work [Chili] with a vials so that in her mind she keeps anticipating them and it keeps [the scent] uninformed in her mind.”

Heide said that for Chili, it’s a daily game of hide-and-seek. 

“I consider a scent-detection dog would be profitable on each farm,” pronounced Lyons. “We’re really vehement to have her around.”

Article source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/insect-sniffing-dog-keeps-greenhouse-pestfree-1.4368366?cmp=rss