Virginia Tech-Led Pest-Control Measure Saves Up to $309 Million for Indian Farmers, Consumers

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Newswise Virginia Tech researchers who first discovered a devastating pest in India and devised a natural way to combat it have now put an economic value on their counterattack: up to $309 million the first year and more than $1 billion over five years.

Thats the amount of damage the papaya mealybug would have wreaked on farmers and consumers in India without scientists intervention.

The papaya mealybug ripped through crops including papaya, eggplant, and tomato in southern India causing mold and stunted growth before Rangaswamy Muni Muniappan of Virginia Tech identified the pest and spearheaded the natural control program.

For a relatively modest cost of $200,000 during the first year of the intervention, devastation that would have totaled from $524 million to $1.34 billion over five years was prevented, Muniappan and other scientists report in the February issue of the journal Crop Protection.

Indias first efforts to eradicate the papaya mealybug failed, says Muniappan, who heads up Virginia Techs federally funded Integrated Pest Management Innovation Lab program, a venture that works in developing countries to minimize crop losses, increase farmer income, and decrease pesticide use. The government and farmers tried spraying pesticides, but crop losses kept getting larger. It was clear to us that this was a case not for poisons but for natural, biological controls.

The winning intervention centered on three parasitic wasps from Mexico, natural enemies of the mealybug that the U.S. government first employed in Florida after the pest spread there in the late 1990s. The wasp lays its eggs inside the mealybug larvae, and when the eggs hatch, the young wasps eat the larvae.

Virginia Techs work to stop the papaya mealybug is an important contribution to protecting U.S. crops, says Marjorie A. Hoy, a University of Florida entomologist not associated with the Virginia Tech study who was instrumental in controlling a Florida infestation.

Its impossible for regulatory agencies at the borders to inspect and remove any infested material they try, but its impossible to do it all," Hoy says. "Im happy to hear that [Virginia Tech scientists] conducted an economic analysis. That is so often missing in biological-control projects.

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Virginia Tech-Led Pest-Control Measure Saves Up to $309 Million for Indian Farmers, Consumers