Heteroptera: Lygaeidae – wheat bug

N. huttoni is a sap feeding insect which can attack many plant parts including seeds. Both adults and nymphs can cause damage. On wheat, damage is essentially observed when grains are attacked at the milk-ripe stage. The insect saliva contains an enzyme which affects the gluten proteins. This causes severe quality deterioration in baked products (sticky dough, poor loaf volume and poor bread texture). It is reported that during the worst outbreak recorded in New Zealand in 1970, about 10,000 tons of wheat were damaged by N. huttoni. On brassicas damage is observed when young plants are attacked. Feeding punctures are made around stems at ground level, often leading to plant wilting and collapse. For example during experiments, serious damage was observed on swede seedlings (B. napus var. napobrassica) with up to 70% of young plants being lost.

 In New Zealand, N. huttoni has a wide ecological distribution from coastal locations to altitudes of over 1800 m. It is noted that N. huttoni usually feeds on weeds growing on waste lands or roadsides, often in the vicinity of crops, and only migrates to crops in dry years. In the Netherlands and Belgium, it was found in dry, warm waste grounds and roadsides with sparse vegetation (e.g. in Oost Vlaanderen, large numbers of N. huttoni were found in an abandoned wheat field). N. huttoni overwinters as adult and has 2 or 3 generations per year in New Zealand. Under European conditions, the situation is still unclear but related species have 1 to 2 generations per year.