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Written by Chris J. Magyar
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Thursday, 19 June 2008 |
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Instead of spraying for LBAM, the CDFA will release sterile moths.
AG Kawamura announced today that the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) is abandoning plans to spray pheromones in urban areas, replacing that strategy for eradicating light brown apple moth (LBAM) with a colony of sterile moths beginning late fall and early winter. Beginning with 200,000 sterile moths in pilot programs and growing to as many as 2 million, the program also aims to disrupt the mating cycle of the LBAM (males mate with the sterile females and no eggs are produced), causing population collapse in the hot spots identified by the CDFA. The location of the pilot program will be determined by trapping data that still continues to be gathered. The sterile moth program came about due to research by the US Department of Agriculture, in which a sterile colony has been able to grow much faster than the CDFA expected. What looked like a program for five years down the line is suddenly viable, Kawamura says. "Sterile moth release is a very solid technique we can use," he says. "The difficulty comes from getting a meaningful enough population that can succeed generation after generation." There will be much more on this story on the site and in next week's edition. 
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