Even though farmers have been dealing with rice stink bugs as pests since the 1880s, entomologists are still getting to know them at the genetic level.
A first-of-its-kind study published on the genetics of rice stink bugs offers clues that could shape the battlefront on insecticide resistance for a tiny creature that costs Arkansas farmers millions of dollars a year. Rice and grain sorghum are the main economic crops, yet the bug feeds on many kinds of plants.
"They are found in every state that cultivates rice except for California. It's the No. 1 pest of rice during the heading stage, when grain is forming," said Allen Szalanski, professor in the Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology for the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station and the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences.
Szalanski joined fellow researchers from the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, and Florida A&M University to study the genetic variation of native and invasive rice stink bugs using a mitochondrial DNA marker. They published their results last year in the journal Florida Entomologist.
Source : uark.edu