Wasp ‘SWAT team’ out to rescue Indonesian cassava crops

JAKARTA, Indonesia – An “eco-friendly SWAT team” of 2,000 tiny wasps will be released in Indonesia on Wednesday, September 24, to battle bugs threatening to devour cassava crops, a major staple and source of income for millions, scientists said.

The 2-millimeter A. Lopezi parasitic wasps work by laying larvae that consumes the mealybugs from the inside and mummifies them. The wasps need to consume the pest to survive.

The cassava pink mealybug is native to South America, as is cassava, and is one of the world’s most destructive pests preying on the crop, according to the team of scientists behind the wasp release.

It likely traveled to Africa and Asia by hitchhiking on infected cassava as it was transported across countries and continents.

Scientists behind the release, from the Colombia-based International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), Indonesia’s Bogor Agricultural University and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, have dubbed the wasps an “eco-friendly SWAT team” and stress they are harmless to humans and animals.

The mealybugs “have been living in the lap of luxury” in their new environments, where they face no effective threats, according to Kris Wyckhuys, an entomologist from CIAT focusing on Asia.

“It’s time to help nature along.”

The wasps, which are native to Central America, will first be released in a confined field on the outskirts of Jakarta on Wednesday afternoon, allowing them to reproduce naturally and to be monitored in local conditions before being unleashed in an open field.

Indonesia is one of the world’s biggest cassava producers and each year plants some one million hectares of the crop. It is the second most-consumed staple after rice in the developing nation of 250 million people, which struggles with malnutrition.

It is consumed as a vegetable but also processed into starch to make a variety of products from noodles to pharmaceuticals.

The mealybugs are capable of reducing cassava yields by up to 84%, and were first reported as a major problem in Asia in Thailand in 2008.

The pest has also been detected in other Asian countries including Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.

Although the current area affected in Indonesia is still low, the scientists said the pest can spread fast if not managed, as Thailand found. Wasps were successfully used in Thailand to tackle the problem.

“If we don’t act now, this could be a major blow to the country’s cassava industry and to the millions of farmers who depend on this crop for their incomes,” said Aunu Rauf, an entomologist with Bogor Agricultural University.

A massive aerial wasp drop in the 1980s in sub-Saharan Africa was credited with saving the cassava industry from $20 billion in potential damages. – Rappler.com