Drones and beneficial insect release
Drones and beneficial insect release
Terravata is an Idaho-based company that uses drones for a variety of services.
One of the most unusual ways the company uses drones is to release beneficial insects to manage pests.
In this case, to combat spider mites that feed on corn and other crops by using predatory mites that feed on the spider mites, which can be a serious threat to crops.
“Yeah, they can get really nasty,” Terravata owner Jake Pool says about the spider mites.
They're called a spider mite, he says, because when they start to increase their populations, they create spider-like webbing on leaves and then lay their eggs in them.
Pool says the pest mites, also known as the two-spotted spider mite, can multiple very quickly, going from an egg to an adult within a week. When they feed on corn, hops, mint, sugar beets and other crops, they can have serious effects on yields.
“They can be really tricky to kill,” Pool says. “They’re so small they’re hard to see with the naked eye.”
The predatory mites are natural predators to the spider mites and can be dropped from the drones like tiny paratroopers onto fields. A mite with a parachute is actually the logo of Parabug, the California company that Terravata has partnered with.
Pool says in the past crews would have to walk through fields with small bottles and release the beneficial mites by hand.
“It was a very cumbersome and time-consuming process,” he says.
Pool says that with drones they can map out a field and cover about 10 acres per load, landing only to change batteries and reload more mites into the spinning cylinders they’re released from. He says they can cover from two to 300 acres per drone in a day.
Terravata works with a number of insectaries in the county to get the predatory mites.
Insectaries are facilities that rear beneficial insects that are used for biological pest control in agriculture.
The insects are shipped in cold packs in a carrier material that gives them a temporary habitat during transit. Most come from insectaries here in the United States, but some are from as far away as Israel.
He says there’s probably always going to be a need for pesticide usage, but a lot of times the spider mites develop a resistance to miticides.
“I look at the beneficial insect release as just another tool in your tool belt,” he said.
Pool says his company tries to make the spraying of the beneficial insects affordable and comparable to the same cost of a miticide that would be applied.
Pool and his one other employee do applications in Idaho in the summer and in the winter in California on strawberry fields.
They also do nighttime applications when it’s too hot and release other kinds of predatory insects for a variety of pests.
“A lot of people still don't know about it, so I … enjoy educating the general public, whether it's farmers or not,” Pool says.
He says he also enjoys being able to open a container and show the growers what these predatory mites or other beneficial insects they’re releasing look like and getting the drone up in the air to show them the camera view, as well as all the capabilities and technology that's built into the drones.
A common question Pool gets asked about releasing insects is what the beneficial insects do when they run out of a food source.
“A lot of these species are native to our area, so we're not inducing a non-native species,” he says. “And if they don't have a food source, they're just not going to generate anymore and they'll eventually die off.”
