Ranchers and hay producers in more than 20 counties have reported a new pest damaging their grass.
The pasture mealybug is an invasive insect that originates from Australia. It’s recently been found in fields from the Rio Grande Valley to east of Houston. Farmers and entomologists alike are looking for methods to control the bug.
Stephen Biles, an integrated pest management specialist in Port Lavaca with the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service, spoke to the Texas Standard about the pest. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: How’d this get on your radar, these bugs?
Stephen Biles: About the middle of July of this past year, we got a phone call from a local cattleman in Victoria County that called the county extension office with a problem in his pastures. And so we did what we normally do is we get in the truck and we go out and look at his pasture and see what’s going on. And that’s kind of the first we saw of it.
Well, my understanding is that this insect is new to Texas. How long did it take you to understand what you were looking at?
So we got the insects and we took samples and we sent them to USDA and I think it was the middle of about the 10th or 11th of September that they responded with a positive identification on the species.
It just takes a long time because there’s not a whole lot of specialists in mealybugs like that. So you gotta find the right person.
How did these pasture mealybugs get here? Do we know?
We don’t know for sure. They could have come in by any of a number of different mechanisms and probably it’s likely that they came in on some kind of plant material.
Back in 2019 or 2020 was when they were first noticed to be a problem in like some of the Caribbean islands and so it’s suspected that they probably started there and then came here from that point, but they could have also originated from some plant material that came from overseas.
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So what do they actually do? Can you talk me through the problems they cause for farmers and ranchers?
Right, so the insect, it’s a very small, tiny insect. It’s not hard to find because it’s white-colored in its later stages.
But when the insect is feeding, it will inject saliva into the plant. And that saliva will cause the plant to react. And that’s what we get in this case. And it seems to be pretty toxic to two parts of the leaf and it can progress to where it kills the whole leaf and eventually will kill all the leaves on the plant.
The worst-case scenario that I saw was actually the first pasture that we went into and it was late July. It should have been a nice green lush pasture and it was completely brown. I mean, we had about a seven or eight-acre hay field that was just completely brown.
Are there any clues about how to eradicate them, or that is something that you’re still looking into?
The management of this insect is something that we’re in the very early stages of. We did manage to get a few insecticide trials out. There are some challenges because it’s a new insect.
Part of the challenge is when they’re in low numbers, it’s crawling around on your hands and knees looking at grass, and it can be challenging from that perspective. Some of what we have learned is that most of the insecticides that we have labeled for use for control of other insects in pastures are not currently labeled in pasture grasses of Texas.
I mean, there’s no chance that these things will just die off in the winter, I suppose.
So I have said “I don’t know” a lot of times this year when regarding to this.
Is this going to be a flash in the pan and it’s going to be gone next year? That possibility exists. At the same time, the spread that we’ve seen – you know, we were documenting this from the Rio Grande Valley all the way up to north of Bryan. And I know that it’s at least east of Houston in like Liberty County. It didn’t get there in one year.
You know, it’s likely that this is going to be a long-term challenge that we’re going to have to work with and solve for our pasture guys.
