Small conical snails are an emerging pest in southern WA. They can damage crops at germination, reduce pasture biomass and downgrade harvested grain if not managed carefully.

Snail management requires a strategic approach and can include removing the green bridge, burning windrows and timely baiting early in the season to prevent snails from breeding. However, even with a good control program, snails can be a problem at harvest. In WA, grain receival standards for snail numbers in barley and canola have tightened. Snails in canola seed and barley grain can result in a discount or even in the seed or grain being undeliverable.

Key points

• Small conical snails (Prietocella barbara) are an emerging pest in southern Western Australia and can downgrade harvested grain
• Snail-crushing grain rollers in conjunction with rotary grain cleaners have been successfully used for less than 10 years on the Yorke Peninsula, South Australia, to remove snails from harvested grain
• In a WA trial, rolling grain barley reduced small conical snail numbers by 70 per cent on average without damaging grain quality
• In the same trial, using a rotary grain cleaner with 2.2 millimetre screens removed 95 per cent of small conical snails from canola seed, but canola losses could be up to 5.5 per cent
• Snail rollers with a gap between rollers of 0.7mm or less reduced the number of snails in canola seed by 43 to 91 per cent
• As the gap between rollers decreased, the percentage of damaged seeds and admixture increased