China Drone Attack on Crop-Eating 'Monster' Shows 98% Kill Rate (bloomberg.com) 39
An army of drones deployed to fight a crop-devouring pest in a southern area of China has recorded a mortality rate of as high as 98%, according to the manufacturer. From a report: XAG, a Guangzhou-based drone maker, teamed up with Germany's Bayer Crop Science in a drone swarm operation to kill the fall armyworm in China's Guangxi region. The autonomous devices, loaded with low-toxicity insecticide, have also successfully managed the pests in a government-led operation in the southwest province of Yunnan, XAG said. "It is the 'crop-devouring monster' that attacks over 80 crop varieties," XAG said in a statement Monday. Most farmers resort to traditional insecticide sprayers, which not only fail to move fast enough against the "ravenous, fast-moving fall armyworm" that can fly up to 100 kilometers in one night, but also expose them to dangerous chemicals, it said.
The fall army worm, a crop-devouring pest, has spread from the Americas to Africa and Asia, gorging on rice, corn, vegetables, cotton and more. Since arriving in China, it has advanced north, affecting 950,000 hectares of crops in 24 provinces as of mid-August, including parts of Hebei, Shaanxi and Shandong, according to an official report published late last month. Outbreaks at 90% of the affected areas are now under control, the report said.
The fall army worm, a crop-devouring pest, has spread from the Americas to Africa and Asia, gorging on rice, corn, vegetables, cotton and more. Since arriving in China, it has advanced north, affecting 950,000 hectares of crops in 24 provinces as of mid-August, including parts of Hebei, Shaanxi and Shandong, according to an official report published late last month. Outbreaks at 90% of the affected areas are now under control, the report said.
About Time (Score:3)
I honestly never thought about using drones this way, sort of like a mini crop duster. Very interesting.
conclusions: (Score:5, Funny)
~army worms can fly 100km with no wings which exposes them to dangerous chemicals
Anything else?
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I think that about sums it up.
Wish I had mod points (+1 funny)
Same read (Score:2)
I came here to post pretty much the same thing, though your addition of the second item explains how they were able to reach the drones.
I guess nuking them from orbit really is the only way to be sure, since that is just out of the 100km range... they could be evolving fast though.
RIP (Pieces) drones, we hardly knew ye.
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Good catches. I liked the part about crop-eating drones...
"The autonomous devices, loaded with low-toxicity insecticide, have also successfully managed the pests in a government-led operation in the southwest province of Yunnan, XAG said. "It is the 'crop-devouring monster' that attacks over 80 crop varieties,""
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They haven't learned anything (Score:3)
By April 1960, Chinese leaders changed their opinion due to the influence of ornithologist Tso-hsin Cheng who pointed out that sparrows ate a large number of insects, as well as grains. Rather than being increased, rice yields after the campaign were substantially decreased. Mao ordered the end of the campaign against sparrows, replacing them with bed bugs, as the extermination of sparrows upset the ecological balance, and insects destroyed crops as a result of the absence of natural predators. By this time, however, it was too late. With no sparrows to eat them, locust populations ballooned, swarming the country and compounding the ecological problems already caused by the Great Leap Forward
Re:They haven't learned anything (Score:5, Informative)
Um...ahem... you missed a part in TFS....
"The fall army worm, a crop-devouring pest, has spread from the Americas to Africa and Asia...", beginning of the second paragraph.
The bug is not a native species
Re:They haven't learned anything (Score:4, Informative)
The US has similar problems with Asian insects, we are losing entire tree species that are not evolved to deter some of the non-native species.
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The Eurasian Tree Sparrow is a native species that has long been woven into the region's ecosystems. Trying to eradicate it disrupted the food web.
The Fall Army Worm is an invasive species. It predates on crops and nothing predates on it.
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Well there are things that eat the fall armyworms. Birds and certain insects, for instance. I would like to say with this post, that the hilarious wingless "worm that flies 100 km in a night" and all that was just too funny in TFA.
https://www.scmp.com/business/... [scmp.com]
http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/crea... [ufl.edu]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://www.planetnatural.com/... [planetnatural.com]
Quote from the above URL:
Release trichogramma wasps to parasitize any newly laid eggs. These tiny beneficial insects — 1mm or less — inse
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I for one welcome the new sparrow-hunter drones.
Maybe? (Score:3)
Napalm (Score:3)
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Dude. It was a joke and a movie reference. It was funny to someone who knows English well enough that they can understand how badly mangled the summary was (requiring substantial intelligence and education), and also people who enjoy movie references - I mean who doesn't enjoy a good movie reference?
Humorless scolds I guess, that's who.
Your post reeks of desperation for +1 Funny upmods.
Since they don't count for Karma who would be "desperate" for a funny mod??? No-one on Earth since the dawn of time has
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an oxymoron (Score:3, Insightful)
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Agreed. This just replaces manned spray planes with unmanned spray planes. A "real" automated solution would be bots that visually inspect plants for critters and zap or squash them when found.
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Low-toxicity pesticides seems to be an established concept in UN's Food and Agriculture Organization resources [fao.org] (document search hint "least/less/highly toxic") and university resources [ucanr.edu], used to denote pesticides which cause minimal harm to non-targets such as humans and wildlife. You seem to have a chip on your shoulder for so readily blaming others for that which you do not bother looking up.
A specific pesticide isn't mentioned -- neither in the article nor its references -- presumably because China's Inst
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Yes, I'm sure it's less toxic than other things but that doesn't make it non-toxic.
No one has claimed that the pesticides are non-toxic, just less toxic than typical pesticides. Don't let "good" be the enemy of "perfect."
What are the long-term ecological impacts? What are the impacts of persistent/chronic low-level exposure meted out over years? Oh, they didn't study did? Then how do they claim know? For all we know, it's what's helping kill off the bats through a long chain of consequence.
Products are tested through the scientific method, which cannot prove a negative. Studies have to determine lethal doses and continuously fail to show significant harmful effects, then regulatory agencies and the scientific community can regard the pesticide/medicine/treatment/foodstuff as safe within resonable doubt. That's how our evidence-based regulatory society curre
I thought this was possibly cool until..... (Score:2)
Though part of me also expected a dark twist where it was going to be killing humans stealing from fields....
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Though part of me also expected a dark twist where it was going to be killing humans stealing from fields....
You could. Just replace the insecticide with a chemical nerve agent. Preferably one that doesn't persist like VX. After all, they are basically just insecticides for people.
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I've read of a ground based robot pest exterminator that used live steam...which probably means boiling water by the time it got that far from the nozzle.
OTOH, perhaps that would be too heavy to fly.
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-until I saw it was still using pesticide. I assumed they had made something that would kill pests without spraying pesticide all over their food.
Though part of me also expected a dark twist where it was going to be killing humans stealing from fields....
The pesticide could be a BTK variant. Though to increase the effectiveness of BTK based pesticides some substances that are slightly toxic until rinsed off could be used. It is the larval stage of these moths that does the damage and is susceptible to the application of BTK so to increase the footprint of BTK there might be some additives which makes the bacteria stick to moths and spread some of it to the egg clusters that they lay after flying to other locations. Using drones to selectively spray insect
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98% kill rate (Score:2)
It won’t take many generations of army worm for that percentage to start plummeting, unless they’re very careful.
So I’m guessing they don’t mention the insecticide (although I’m gonna guess Bt) because they don’t want some company’s stock price to start plummeting.
This is the future (Score:2)
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We need to build swarms of robots to kill pests and weeds while not poisoning the crops they are supposed to protect!
Most of the problems with the use of low toxicity pesticides like BTK is accuracy of application. Drones using AI with the ability to target pockets of harmful infestation could go a very long way in keeping down the indiscriminate kill of other insects that are effected by BTK. As far as using drones to spray DDT or other high toxicity chemicals selectively, it is rather the same as using strategic battlefield nuclear weapons. We currently use crop dusting technology, which in a way is like using an ICBM w
Fools (Score:2)
Everyone knows you deal with the fall army worms by unleashing wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the worms.
Planes on a snake (Score:2)
I've been considering using tech against the invasive anaconda destroying the Everglades.
First I thought maybe giant mesh you could electrify like a giant bug zapper. Obviously with a motion sensor and camera so you could verify the intended target.
Then I thought maybe little remote controlled rabbits ( that had a body temp) that could explode , or better yet release a poison and be reused.
Then i thought maybe just the anaconda's favorite prey, with a poison capsule inside (peta would shit, and a mountain
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I, for one, welcome our new Noctuid overlords (Score:2)
Invasive insects undergoing initial expansion in a new biosphere are very difficult/impossible to control; maybe with widescale aerial (airplane) spraying as undesirable as that is. Drones are an idea but I can't see this scaling to broadacre crops - drones patrolling thousands of hectares? They wouldn't go fast enough to stop the caterpillars from causing damage.
98% kill rate on army of drones? (Score:1)
Drones Against Fall Armyworm (Score:1)