CIRAD and INRA, two of ENDURE’s French partners, have combined forces with other research and higher educational institutions to form a network to drive innovation in the control of not only crop pests but also arthropods which transmit pathogens causing infectious diseases in humans and animals.
Called Vectopole Sud, it is the first time such a ‘One health’ approach, combining plant, veterinary and public human health, has been taken in Europe and is designed to pool infrastructure and expertise, bringing together more than 400 researchers and technicians from five laboratories that belong to the scientific community at Montpellier University of Excellence (MUSE) in southern France and Agropolis International.
CIRAD reports: “The goal: to develop a French and European centre of excellence in the field of disease vectors and crop pests in order to improve early warning systems, monitoring and control and, thus, protect human health, agriculture and livestock production.”
The University of Monpellier’s Triolet campus will be paying particular attention to the fall armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda ) an invasive moth originating in the tropical regions of the New World. Its larvae are a serious crop pest and attacks are most common in maize, rice, sorghum and sugarcane, though they will also attack a range of vegetables too.
As moths, they are incredibly mobile, dispersing throughout the United States. The Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International (CABI) reports on observations in the USA of moths using a low-level jet stream to travel from Mississippi to Canada in just 30 hours.
Worryingly, it was first reported in Africa in 2016 (Nigeria, Sao Tomé, Benin and Togo), with significant damage to maize crops. Since then its presence has been confirmed in more than 30 African countries, prompting the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) to produce a handbook for the Integrated Pest Management of fall armyworm in Africa. It is available here.
One of CIRAD’s leading projects within the Vectopole Sud network is Revolinc, which aims to develop a ramped-up version of the sterile insect technique by 2021. “With this technique, sterile males carry biocides to the females, which then diffuse them in their breeding sites,” explains CIRAD entomologist Jérémy Bouyer. He tells the CIRAD website about a world first in March this year, when Revolinc researchers used drones to release sterile male mosquitoes in Brazil.
But mosquitoes are not the only target as the focus is also on tsetse flies (a vector for diseases in both humans and animals) and Mediterranean fruit flies (Ceratitis capitata , also known as medflies, pictured above right). The latter is a highly invasive quarantine pest with a significant economic impact, affecting production, control costs and market access, notes CABI. The medfly is endemic to most sub-Saharan countries and has invaded many areas of the world (usually through the trade of infected fruit), including the USA, prompting expensive eradication programmes.
In countries around the Mediterranean it is particularly damaging in citrus and peach crops and “mass trapping of females and males using densely-spaced baited traps is being used extensively,” reports CABI.
The other partners in Vectopole Sud, which has received state and regional funding to modernise its laboratories, are CNRS (France’s National Centre for Scientific Research), IRD (France’s National Research Institute for Sustainable Development) and EID Méditerranée (France’s main public mosquito control agency).
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