【Survey】Do you have new research result on fighting against locust?

2020 has been a challenging year for global agricultural production. The spreading of COVID-19 worldwide has caused a huge impact on the production and logistics of agricultural materials. 

In the meantime, the most serious desert locust outbreak seen in East Africa in 70 years, which quickly swept through many countries, made things worse. According to a survey by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), locust swarms have hit 23 countries in East Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.

To deal with the locust disaster, some affected countries had to make "new moves". Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported that Pakistan's government has endorsed a plan to help tackle the country's locust plague by encouraging people to catch the voracious pests and sell them as chicken feed. In India, the use of drones was permitted exceptionally for the first time to combat the menace of a locust invasion.

In early May, FAO reported that preliminary progress has been made in combating the desert locust disaster in East Africa, but it is still necessary to be alert to the second wave of locusts in June threatening food security. Desert locusts are considered to be the most destructive migratory pests in the world. There are as many as 80 million locusts in a one square kilometer locust group. 

At present, the work of prevention and control of locust mainly focus on the early monitoring and alerting, as well as chemical or biological treatment. However, the control of locusts by chemical pesticides inevitably brings environmental and safety concerns to the public, while biological control cannot respond to the sudden outbreak of locusts because of the slow onset time. Therefore, even today, where the level of technology is more developed, locusts are still a difficult agricultural pest problem. To understand the latest research and control methods on locusts, the author looked up correlative literatures on the internet, but unfortunately, there is no breakthrough research finding in this field recently.

If your institution or company has any new research progress or new technologies and products in the prevention or control of locusts, please feel free to contact us and we will evaluate and report.