Kansas University teams with University of Queensland to combat pest
Ralf Dietzgen, an associate professor in agriculture and food innovation at the University of Queensland, is spending three months at K-State as a Fulbright Senior Scholar in a quest to gather data and develop control measures for the small insect known as thrips. He will be working with Dorith Rotenberg and Anna Whitfield, who are co-directors of the Center of Excellence for Vector-Borne Plant Virus Disease Control.
Thrips are voracious eaters, using their asymmetrical mouths to puncture the surface of food crops, flowers and leaves and suck up their contents. Of equal concern to researchers is that thrips are vectors, or carriers, of more than 20 viruses that cause plant disease, especially the tospoviruses, which also multiply in thrips.
Dietzgen recently saw firsthand the devastation that thrips-transmitted viruses can cause. One Queensland grower who provides fresh tomatoes for a large supermarket chain lost most of his crop one year due to a tospovirus transmitted by thrips. The lost crop was valued at more than $500,000.
“By the time the grower saw the disease effects, the thrips had moved on and the virus had been left behind,” Dietzgen said.
“The virus that Ralf is studying isn’t in the U.S. just yet, but thrips insects are able to move around easily so that they could appear hidden in a shipment of produce,” Whitfield said. “Any shipment of vegetables or plants that is traveling around the world could have similar pathogens and pests in it. As a control measure, we are trying to develop broad spectrum, durable resistance using different technologies.”
While Dietzgen’s stay at Kansas State University is relatively short, the researchers hope their new partnership will help lead to long-term solutions for agriculture.
source: hpj.com
