Everyone knows about the constant battle being fought between farmers and the pests on their crops. So far the farmer's only real defense has been to douse their fields with harmful pesticides in hopes to exterminate all the little buggers. But this strategy has always had unintended consequences; non-target organisms can be harmed, chemicals can leach and contaminate ground water, and inevitably the pests will develop a resistance to the toxin over time.
We try to plant our gardens and farms in a way which will invite beneficial insects on to our land to do the dirty work for us.There is great and every growing knowledge on different biological control options. But the aphid to parasitic wasp ratio always seems a little skewed in the aphids favour. If only we could just sprinkle some of those predatory insects onto our crops, like some sort of vegetable saving pixie-dust. 
A company in Israel called Bio-Bee Biological Systems is working on just that. They focus on mass production of beneficial insects and mites for agricultural operations locally and internationally. In large greenhouses they create ideal habitats to breed insects such as bumble bees, parasitic wasps, minute pirate bugs and other arthropods such as the predatory mite. In an effort to reduce fruit fly populations Bio-Bee also produces a line of sterile male Mediterranean Fruit Flies which are released in fruit orchards.
Releasing one gram of predatory mites (80,000 in one small vial) is enough to protect an acre for the season. In just one day a predatory mite can eat up to 5 spider mites or 15-20 of their eggs.
Farms that have adopted this use of pre-packaged insects have seen a 75-80% reduction in their pesticide application - a huge savings. Large farms can spend up to $2.5 billion on insecticides,but to convert to a biological approach, control will cost around 250 million. Workers are thrilled to not have to put on the bio-hazard suits and risk their own health and safety when handling applying pesticides. Consumers are equally thrilled to purchase produce with a less substantial carbon footprint. And the best part - it is extremely rare for a pest to develop immunity or resistance to the predatory insect. It seems like such an obvious solution, I don't know why it's not more common!
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What a novel idea! Do you know if the predatory insects are only host specific or can they target other insects that might not be seen as pests? From that comment about releasing the sterile male fruit flies to limit the population, how does that work? Do the sterile male limit the success of fertile males?
ReplyDeleteThis sort of approach really needs to be looked into for the future if we want to live in a sustainable world! I suppose what I want to know is wheather these sorts of control measures can be implimented effectively in a large proportion of agricultural sectors? For instances the NZ kiwifriut industry got hit hard by the PSI virus (bacteria), would there be potential insects that may feed/ limit the impact of other non-insect pests like in this example or is it purely insect-insect control?
ReplyDeleteGood thought, John, but I would be worried about introducing more non-natives to New Zealand...
DeleteThat is true and MAF would be all over these sorts of introductions... But with solid science and good management it may be an option in the future hopefully (fingers crossed)!
DeleteIm not sure about insects being a control for prokaryotic organisms either Johnathon. Some bacterial and fungal endophytes however, have the ability to produce secondary metabolites, which have been known to be antibacterial/ fungal compounds. Many of these compounds could be present in certain native trees. If the bacteria or fungi is already native it would decrease the risk of reducing biodiversity of the Native fauna. although endophytes do have a symbiotic continuum with their hosts which will need to be taken into account.
DeleteThis seems too good to be true! And in fact it probably is... While reading this I was struck with some ethical questions so I'm sure that it would be met with some hesitance. If you release mass amounts of predators there will be a food shortage and those predators will experience mortality. Even though a mite or other insect might not seem that significant, is releasing them with the knowledge that a lot will not survive ethical? Just something to ponder. I definitely wouldn't be in a protest against these measures, because I definitely can see how they can be a better alternative to pesticide use. Such is life! Choosing the lesser of two evils.
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