An invasive crop pest has devastated some Louisiana farmers’ sugarcane and rice produce since 2008. The Environmental Protection Agency awarded the LSU AgCenter $49,956 to monitor and document the spread of the Mexican rice borer, along with the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry. Entomology professor Mike Stout, one of the grant participants, said the grant will also allow the AgCenter to add the information to a national database and hold experiments to learn more about the severity of the pest. “They’re called borers because the larvae tunnel their way into the rice plant,” Stout said. “They basically cut off the supply of the nutrients to the grain. It can result in basically the complete loss of grain from the rice plant.” The pest has been on the move from the Rio Grande Valley for 20 years and arrived in Calcasieu, Jefferson Davis, Cameron and Beauregard parishes recently, according to grant writer Blake Wilson. “It is currently only reaching population levels high enough to cause economic damage in a small number of rice fields near Vinton, La., although it has wreaked havoc in rice and sugarcane as it has moved across Texas,” Wilson wrote in an email. Wilson added that the pest is “moving eastward at roughly 10 miles a year and is expected to infest the entire Louisiana rice and sugarcane industry by 2035.” By 2035, the state could lose up to $220 million annually of sugarcane revenue and $40 million in rice revenue, Wilson said. Acadia Parish rice farmer Dwayne Zaunbrecher said he had a crop infestation a few years ago, and the Mexican rice borer was considered a possible cause of loss. He has not heard of the pest since, though he said he is concerned about its move across the state. “Anything that’s going to affect rice I’m worried about. Because of where we are in Acadia Parish, we don’t have the opportunity to switch crops,” Zaunbrecher said. “We can [only] raise rice, soybeans, crawfish and cattle.” Wilson said “there is little chance of eliminating or eradicating this pest” since it can reproduce on several grassy weed species, but with this grant, researchers can “slow the spread and minimize ecumenic losses.” The grant will ultimately allow farmers to see “hot spots” of the pests on an interactive online database based on the information LSU AgCenter uploads. ____ Contact Danielle Kelley at [email protected]