Word: bollworm
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...California, the lygus bug invaded cotton fields of the San Joaquin Valley. Worried farmers attacked with insecticides, but the spray killed the natural predators of bollworms. Now the lygus bug is fading, while the bollworm is on the march. University of California at Berkeley Entomologist Robert van den Bosch blames "insecticide salesmen hustling their products" and the "stupidity" of an undiscriminating use of pesticides for aggravating the problem...
...West for the Bollworm...
...Agency has approved for commercial use as a pesticide an insect sex pheromone, the scent emitted by a female to attract males. The new substance, being marketed by Albany International under the trade name Gossyplure H.F., is actually a synthesized version of the scent given off by female pink bollworm moths. These insects produce caterpillars that eat their way through the cotton crops in Southern California and Arizona, costing farmers some $40 million a year in damage and control expenses...
Gossyplure proves the old adage that nothing succeeds like excess. When it is sprayed on a cotton field, it so saturates the air with female pink bollworm moth pheromone that the male moths sometimes go on indiscriminate sex orgies. They try to mate with sticks, stones, vegetation or anything else in the vicinity. However they react, they are seldom able to find the available females; they soon become so accustomed to the scent that they no longer respond to it. The result: a sharp drop in the population of caterpillar young -and crop damage. In field tests near Blythe, Calif...
...approval after laboratory tests showed that it was harmless to humans, wildlife and vegetation and had no effect on other species of insects. (Standard chemical sprays used on cotton fields also kill insects that are beneficial to the crop.) It is conceivable, so to speak, that the bollworm could evolve immunity to its own sex pheromone-for example, by producing a different scent. But scientists could then synthesize the new pheromone and continue to control the frustrated moths...