Bug causing stink for mid-Atlantic farmers

Stinkbugs plaguing the mid-Atlantic region and are causing major trouble for the region's farmers. The bugs "take their long needle-like mouthpiece and stick it into the flesh of fruits and vegetables, leaving them bruised and disfigured," Sabri Ben-Achour of National Public Radio reports. Bob Black, who runs Catoctin Mountain Orchard in Thurmont, Md., said half of one apple variety was damaged: "I can handle a few percent, but gets up to 25 percent, 50 percent — that's pretty devastating to me." (USDA photo by Jeff Wildonger)

"They're now found in more than 30 states, as far west as Washington and California; as far south as Florida they've been detected," said Mike Raup, an entomologist at the University of Maryland. "But right here in the mid-Atlantic region — this is ground zero for the brown marmorated stink bug." Pesticides have had little effect on the bugs. This year's invasion is projected to be even worse than last year's, leaving farmers to look for new solutions.

The bugs were introduced in Allentown, Pa., in the 1990s from Asia, but their natural predators did not come with them. At a U.S. Department of Agriculture lab in Newark, Del., researchers are working on a way to introduce one of the bug's natural predators. The most likely candidate is the Trissolcus wasp, which does not bite or sting, and is the natural nemesis of the brown marmorated stink bug in Asia, Ben-Achour writes. The wasps depend on finding the stink bugs and their eggs to survive. "If they can't find stink bugs or stink bug eggs to lay their own eggs in, they'll die. They can't survive on anything else," entomologist Kim Hoelmer told Ben-Achour. Hoelmer says it will take three years to determine if the wasps are not a threat to the other 300 types of stink bugs in the U.S., so farmers in seven states are asking the Environmental Protection Agency to relax pesticide regulations in the meantime. (Read more)