Fighting Bugs With Bugs: Hatching A Solution For Troubled Trees

hide captionThe parasitic wasp Tamarixia radiata is the natural enemy of the invasive Asian citrus psyllid.

The parasitic wasp Tamarixia radiata is the natural enemy of the invasive Asian citrus psyllid.

We all know about the drought in California, but farmers there have more to worry about than a lack of water.

There's also the looming threat of Asian citrus psyllid (ACP), an invasive pest that flies from tree to tree, feeding on tender leaves. By itself, the psyllid is not particularly harmful, but it can carry citrus greening disease, which kills trees within a few years of infection. There is no cure.

In 2005, ACP spread citrus greening disease all over Florida, devastating the state's $9 billion citrus crop, destroying 60,000 acres of farmland and driving up farming costs by about 40 percent.

ACP came to California in 2008. This alone was worrying, but the truly alarming news came four years later in 2012, when a backyard orange tree in Los Angeles County was found to be infected with citrus greening disease. With both the disease and the carrier present in the state, citrus growers are worried that the agricultural disaster in Florida might repeat itself in California, and they're scrambling for a solution. And instead of relying on chemicals and quarantines, farmers and scientists are turning to an unlikely ally: another bug.

Legacy Of Insects

Using insects to fight invasive pests isn't exactly new. It's called biological control, and California growers have been doing it for over a century. In many ways, the "golden age" of biological control was in the early 1900s. The University of California system supported entomological research expeditions all over the world to find natural predators for invasive pests. Businesses called insectaries popped up, devoted to rearing insects by the millions and selling them to farmers.

Associates Insectary in Santa Paula, Calif., was one of the earliest such businesses. It opened in 1928 and is still active today. Associates rears mites, beetles, snails and wasps hundreds of millions of them each year and releases them on about 8,000 acres of citrus and avocado groves in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. Brett Chandler, owner and operator, says the job is not easy.

"The insects are living, breathing creatures and they have to be collected and fed ... every day of the year," he says. "It's a highly skilled small staff that does the work, and most of it can't be automated."

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Fighting Bugs With Bugs: Hatching A Solution For Troubled Trees