
Partnership Could Yield New
"Attract-and-Kill" Lures for Bad BugsBy Tara Weaver January 11, 1999Attract-and-kill lures so effectively controlled insect pests in a recent
Agricultural Research Service study that
a private company has agreed to help further develop the technology. ARS is the
U.S. Department of Agriculture's chief
scientific research agency. In ARS laboratory and field experiments, lures containing a special blend of
pheromone to attract cabbage looper and beet armyworm moths--laced with a
minute quantity of insecticide--successfully drew the pests to their death.
This suggests that attract-and-kill lures can control these and probably other
insect pests in the field on a large scale. Encouraging preliminary results led
IPM Technologies,
Inc., Portland, Ore., to sign a two-year Cooperative Research and
Development Agreement with ARS to build on these results and bring new
commercial products to market to manage crop-damaging pests. The problem has been that systems for applying mating-disruption pheromones
are generally short-lived, labor-intensive, inconvenient and expensive compared
to more conventional alternatives such as insecticides. Scientists with ARS Center for Medical, Agricultural and Veterinary Entomology in Gainesville, Fla., will work with IPM Technologies to develop low cost, environmentally safe, synthetically based pheromone lures that mimic the insects' natural chemical scents to control major worldwide agricultural pests. This strategy reduces pesticide spraying to control crop-feeding insects,
because it targets only pest insects. It also helps save beneficial insects
that would normally be killed with area-wide pesticide sprayings. The insects targeted--fall and beet armyworm, cabbage looper, diamondback
moth, tobacco budworm and corn earworm--are among the most destructive U.S.
crop pests. Corn earworm and armyworms attack a wide variety of crops including
cotton, corn, sorghum, peanuts, lettuce, tomatoes and peppers. Other pests such as the diamondback moth and cabbage looper are more limited
in the range of plants attacked, but they can totally destroy crops such as
cabbage, collards and broccoli. Scientific contact: Everett Mitchell, Behavior and Biocontrol Research Unit, ARS Center for Medical, Agricultural and Veterinary Entomology, 1600 S.W. 23d Dr., Gainesville, FL 32604, phone (352) 374-5710, fax (352) 374-5804, [email protected]. U.S. Department of Agriculture | |