Sniffing out weevils: How Chili a dog is saving hothouse peppers

Chili the Belgian shepherd is a dog whose nose could save millions of dollars, strengthen hundreds of jobs and potentially safeguard a destiny of Canada’s burgeoning hothouse peppers industry.

The industry, that is value $275 million and is strong in Leamington, outward Windsor, Ont., was ravaged final year by a little invasive harassment called a peppers weevil.

The weevils den into bell peppers on a vine to feed and lay eggs. The peppers eventually dump to a belligerent and die.

Workers during NatureFresh Farms, one of North America’s largest hothouse peppers growers, could usually watch as hundreds of thousands of their plants — worth millions of dollars — succumbed to a blight.

Cam Lyons, in assign of sport pests in a company’s 53 hectares of greenhouses, attempted all in his arsenal to control a weevils.

“It was by distant a misfortune harassment we had ever run into in my career.”
Cam Lyons, NatureFresh Farms

“We looked during trapping methods and scouting methods to find it, fast found out that all we attempted was in vain, a weevil was holding over,” he said. “It was by distant a misfortune harassment we had ever run into in my career.”

Cam Lyons helps control pests in a 53 hectares of NatureFresh’s bell peppers greenhouses in Leamington, Ont. (Marie Morrissey, CBC)

Lyons says a association avoids regulating pesticides to fight invaders. Instead, he looks for healthy predators to whatever’s harming a peppers. Typically, that would involve releasing parasites to disgust and kill a weevils, or deploy other bugs that can locate and eat a weevils without harming a peppers.

But because a weevil is creatively from Mexico, it has no healthy predators in Canada.

High stakes

For Lyons, a stakes were high and a vigour was on. That’s when he remembered conference about dogs that are lerned to spot for bedbugs. If a dog could hunt and find those little crawlers, he thought, since not weevils?

“I started articulate to tighten co-workers about it and we had a giggle about it during first,” Lyons said. “But then, as we started losing so most product, a conditions became impassioned and a thought started to indeed sound viable.”

He contacted Sid Murray, trainer of a bedbug-sniffing dogs. At his devalue an hour’s expostulate outward Toronto, Murray also trains dogs to spot for drugs, explosives and fuel used in arson.

Two little though potentially harmful live weevils are safely kept in a hermetic tablet bottle.

“I told [Lyons] that if we give me a odour, I can steer a dog to find whatever you’re looking for,” pronounced Murray.

Murray found Chili through specialized breeders in Mexico, a source for most of North America’s sniffer dogs. The canines — typically shepherds, malamutes or Labrador retrievers — are bred from animals skilful during focusing on one charge for one reward.

To steer Chili, Murray used live weevils in tiny tablet bottles with seperated caps. Chili came to associate the smell of a weevils with the reward, a gnaw toy. Murray then hid a weevils out of sight, so that anticipating a weevil got Chili her gnaw fondle prerogative for a few minutes.

The right dog for a job

After 5 weeks of training, Chili was means to spot out a weevil inside a bell pepper. Murray takes no credit for that success.

 “Honestly, a dog was unusual when she came in.”
Sid Murray, trainer

“Honestly, a dog was unusual when she came in,” he said. Murray also had regard for Tina Heide, a chairman NatureFresh chose to hoop Chili. “Very occasionally do we get a handler as good as she is.”

That’s substantially since Heide, from NatureFresh’s bug brigade, had knowledge caring for horses and her possess dog.

For about 3 hours any day, Heide leads Chili by opposite sections of a sprawling NatureFresh complex. They initial combine on a loading docks and large placement centre where weevils can get in by hitching a float on apparatus and supplies, such as rented wooden palettes that could have been used on putrescent farms.

Trainer Sid Murray’s chocolate lab, Hunter, is prepared to hunt for bedbugs. (Marie Morrissey)

The greenhouses are any a distance of 6 city blocks. They can enclose 210,000 peppers plants flourishing 4 metres into a atmosphere from hydroponic tubes dangling about 20 centimetres off a building — a lot of belligerent for Chili and Heide to cover.

This early showing comes during a price. NatureFresh spent $15,000 on Chili and her training.

So far this year, NatureFresh has not had a critical weevil problem for Chili to spot out. But she will infer her value in a subsequent 4 months, as new peppers seedlings are planted and mature. Lyon says that’s primary time for weevils to take hold.

The region’s other peppers producers will be examination closely, including Vitali Jdkov, a grower during circuitously hothouse operation Dicicco Farms.

The association mislaid 4 hectares of peppers final year. Wary of another calamity, Dicicco switched most of that prolongation to tomatoes this year. He hopes NatureFresh’s investment in Chili bears fruit and creates pepper-growing a safer investment.

“I’m tender how dauntless they are to plant such a large stand again, meaningful what they went through,” pronounced Jdkov. “With a dog, it’s a really engaging idea. Early showing of a bug is really important.”

Article source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/sniffing-out-weevils-how-chili-the-dog-is-saving-greenhouse-peppers-1.4416821?cmp=rss