The Ministry of Agribusiness of the Buenos Aires province, Argentina, signed a partnership agreement for collaboration between five municipalities for the development of a project on the biological control dichroplus maculipennis in the major endemic region of the province to reduce long-term incidence of the plague.

The signing of the agreement was headed by minister Leonardo Sarquís. “It is a pilot test to combat dichroplus maculipennis. It is an absolutely innovative tool in Argentina that has been applied successfully in the United States and China. Today, we are using this in several municipalities. The goal, as our governor asks, is to go a step further,” stressed Sarquís.

The goal of the project is to produce spores of the pathogen in enough volumes to arrive with scale production in the field, in which the pathogen is required to create and reproduce healthy dichroplus maculipennis and inoculate with the pathogen for the latter to reproduce. Finally, the spores are extracted from the sick dichroplus maculipennis and stored for later application.

The Provincial Enforcement Department highlighted that it was important to understand that “the result will be seen in the long-term and will complement the crop protection applications, once the applications shrink the population of dichroplus maculipennis in the infested fields.”

In 2017, the province already had promoted a “Prevention Program of Dichroplus Maculipennis,” with the goal of achieving an early detection of the plague and its control on the part of producers.

Source: AgroNews