Campaign targets greater awareness of stink bugs
Biosecurity New Zealand is ramping up a public awareness campaign to encourage people to report possible sightings of the brown marmorated stink bug (BMSB).
Scientists have developed a new trap for brown marmorated stink bugs (BMSB).
The trap may help to control a future invasion in New Zealand of BMSB through the removal of future offspring by attracting and removing males and females.
Plant & Food Research says the future invasion of BMSB poses a serious risk to the New Zealand economy.
BMSB has caused enormous crop losses overseas and it has been intercepted at the New Zealand border a number of times.
Professor Max Suckling, science group leader at Plant & Food Research, and colleagues working in Italy (where BMSB have been destroying crops), have developed two traps that could be used in New Zealand for BSMB surveillance or eradication.
“The Nazgûl” trap is based on a “ghost net” design developed in the USA and contains a pheromone and insecticide-treated net attached to a coat hanger and suspended from a tree. “The name is derived from Tolkien’s Ringwraiths and was chosen to help elicit public support for biosecurity in New Zealand to help save ‘Middle Earth'," says Suckling.
During testing The Nazgûl caught and killed all mobile life stages of BMSB and 3.5 more nymphs and adult bugs than the low cost but inefficient sticky panel traps currently used for surveillance in New Zealand.
The scientists also developed a “live trap” which uses the wind direction, via wind vane, to trap bugs inside a pheromone-baited cylinder.
This trap caught up to 15-times more adult BMSB than the sticky panel traps and could be used to remove future offspring by attracting and removing females and nymphs.
“The traps are prototypes that could be used in future as part of a critical surveillance and/or semiochemical-based eradication response and work is ongoing,” says Suckling.
Analysis by Dunedin-based Techion New Zealand shows the cost of undetected drench resistance in sheep has exploded to an estimated $98 million a year.
Shipping disruption caused by Houthi rebels in the Red Sea has so far not impacted fertiliser prices or supply on farm.
The opportunity to spend more time on farm while providing a dedicated service for shareholders attracted new environmental manager Ben Howden to work for Waimakariri Irrigation Limited (WIL).
Federated Farmers claims that the Otago Regional Council is charging ahead unnecessarily with piling more regulation on rural communities.
Dairy sheep and goat farmers are being told to reduce milk supply as processors face a slump in global demand for their products.
OPINION: We have good friends from way back who had lived in one of our major cities for many years.
OPINION: A mate of yours truly wants to know why the beef schedule differential is now more than 45-50 cents…
OPINION: Your canine crusader understands that MPI were recently in front of the Parliamentary Primary Sector Select Committee for an…