Two LSU AgCenter insect experts are looking for a way to kill two insects with one pesticide.
Michael Stout and Michael Perich, both entomology professors, are looking for a way to tweak currently used stink bug pesticides to control mosquitoes, also.
Stout said they are using stink bug pesticides because they are used predominately by Louisiana rice farmers to control the stink bug problem in rice fields.
“We plan on looking at how different formulations of insecticides impact mosquito and stinkbug control,” Stout said.
Stout said this project will help the public if they are able to find a pesticide that also controls mosquitoes, the carrier of the West Nile virus, while also controlling the stink bug population that is wreaking havoc on rice fields.
“The rice stink bug is an important late-season pest of rice,” Stout said. “It flies into rice fields when the rice ‘heads,’ the rice panicles or grain-bearing structures develop. The stink bugs suck the juices out of the grains as they develop, causing reductions in yield and grain quality.”
One of Perich’s graduate assistants, Ana-Maria Sanchez, has found that the movement of stink bugs into rice coincides with the increase in the mosquito larvae population, thus making the rice field a perfect place for the research to take place, Stout said.
“Rice fields in Louisiana are habitats for both agricultural pests, insects that feed on the rice itself and thereby reduce profits for farmers, and medically-important mosquito species,” Stout said.
The project also is looking at what current rice planters are doing and if it is working to control mosquitoes.
“We are interested in how management of the rice stink bug impacts populations of mosquitoes,” Stout said. “In other words, by making pesticide applications to control stink bugs, are farmers also reducing populations of medically-important mosquitoes,” Stout said.
The cost of making a new pesticide could be a multi-million dollar endeavor and that is why they are only combining insecticides that are already on the market, Stout said.
“The closest thing to development we plan on doing is looking at how different formulations of insecticides impact mosquito and stinkbug control,” Perich said.
The project started this past summer with research occurring at the Rice Research Station in Crowley.
As of now, the project has been funded by the Louisiana Rice Research Board and in October the professors will file for a grant from the Louisiana Board of Regents to continue to fund the project. Stout said they hope to receive a grant in the sum of $150,000 for the next three years.