Have stink bugs invaded your garden, backyard and house? Chesterfield produce did not birth these pesky little insects. About five years ago the brown marmorated stink bug migrated into Northern Virginia and began damaging the apple crop and other produce. Now the little vermin has migrated south causing problems right here in Chesterfield. New research is under way at Virginia Tech and a U.S. Department of Agriculture research center in Maryland to lure away the invasive pest by imitating the chemical pheromone it generates when eating.
“Adult stink bugs spend the winter under stones or boards, under ground cover or under clumps of dead weeds or in your house,” according to Rodale’s Organic Life
According to Orkin, “Most stink bugs are plant feeders. The first generation in the spring often feed on weeds or grasses. As they develop into adults, they often migrate into fields, orchards and residential landscapes and more importantly home gardens.”
The adult stink bugs attach their eggs to the underside of leaves. The eggs stick to the leaves until they hatch.
“When they first moved in from North to South, the first wave was pretty rough,” said Harman Brumback, a Frederick County farmer and member of the Virginia Farm Bureau Federation Apple Marketing Advisory Committee.
“They’ll actually sting the apple and leave a tiny hole in the fruit. If they do that in the early part of the season, the fruit will then start to rot, or it creates a hard spot. That turns (the apple) into a cull, no good for the fresh fruit business.”
Farmers use chemical controls to reduce stink bug populations, which are extremely hardy. Researchers are attempting to recreate the pheromone that the pest generates when it begins feeding on a plant. The goal of the four-year project is to use genetic engineering to inject that protein into an expendable “trap crop” that would attract stink bugs away from more valuable food crops.
Currently the only way to reduce the population is using hard-core insecticides or by using stink-bug traps.
Jason Lancaster, a Virginia Tech biological sciences doctoral candidate and research assistant,” “We know that once a stink bug lands on a host plant they like, they don’t move very far from it.”
“That’s what makes this research all the more difficult. They don’t respond to each other’s pheromones very well,” Lancaster said. “But luckily what we’re seeing with this research is the genes used to make this pheromone are pretty similar. We’re hoping that once we understand the harlequin bug, the other stink bugs will be much easier.”
For more information contact the Chesterfield Extension office at 751-4401 or email [email protected].
