Experts predict the danger of the spread of ground beetle in crops of grain crops in Ukraine this year. This pest feeds mainly on the fields of winter crops, which were sown on cereal crops precursors.

In recent years, there has been a change in the zone of severity of the cereal ground beetle, dangerous for cereal spike phytophage.

Plots with the number of larvae above the threshold were noted not only in the steppe traditional for the pest (in the zone of the so-called "significant damage" - Dnepropetrovsk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhya, Kirovograd, Nikolaev, Odessa, Kherson regions), but also in the zone of "unsustainable harm", extending even to Polesie (Volhynia).

The maximum average abundance of ground beetles was observed in 2008–2011, but since 2012 they have decreased, fluctuating between 0.5–0.7 ind./ m².

Such a gradual decline in harmfulness, in particular in the forest-steppe zone, is primarily due to the dry July-September, which over the past five years has restrained the active exit of adults from diapause, reduces the fertility of females and leads to the death of young eggs and larvae in the soil.

However, the weather conditions in 2018, namely, relatively low air temperatures in July, sufficient soil moisture during this period and precipitation at the end of October, became a favorable factor for the development of ground beetles.

Although, according to the results of surveys in the fall of 2018, the average abundance indicator remained within the range of the corresponding low values ​​for previous years, in 2019, outbreaks of increased pest numbers may still occur.

First of all, the spread of ground beetles is likely on winter crops that were sown on grain predecessors, on low reliefs, at the places of grain loss after harvesting, near the stacks with straw where the ground beetle migrated from the fields of sprouted scavenger.