Drones latest weapon in war on orchard pest
Sterile codling moths being distributed using drones instead of ATVs
Drones are being used to drop sterile moths onto Okanagan orchards in the latest evolution of a long-running pestcontrol scheme.
Traditionally, the insects have been released into the environment by operators riding all-terrain vehicles.
But experiments are underway using drones instead, and it’s possible airborne deployment will soon become the main valley-wide distribution system.
“They’re perfecting a release mechanism on the drones that allows for the bugs to be dropped in a targeted dispersal above the orchards,” James Baker, mayor of Lake Country and a member of the board of directors for the Sterile Insect Release program, said Thursday.
“If it works as well as it seems to, it should save money, because we won’t have to have a bunch of ATVs being ridden around through orchards and on public roads,” Baker said.
Along with the surmounting of some remaining technical challenges, approval from Transport Canada will be required before drones can be widely used to distribute sterile codling moths.
In the SIR program, sterile codling moths are reared at an Osoyoos facility then released. The moths mate with other insects, but no offspring is produced, which over time has reduced the codling moth population in the Okanagan by an estimated 90 per cent since the 1990s.
In the current tests, an eight-rotor drone flies about 30 metres above an orchard, carrying as many as 32,000 sterile moths to distribute on a typical 16hectare farm in less than 10 minutes.
Sterile moths are distributed once a week on every apple orchard in the Okanagan-Similkameen. Eventually switching to complete drone deployment of the moths could yield considerable operational advantages, said Melissa Tesche, acting general manager of the SIR program.
“As technology improves and battery life gets longer, the drones could cover a much larger area without having to recharge so often,” Tesche said. “And using drones would be a lot less disruptive to farming operations, because we wouldn’t have to have people riding ATVs through orchards every week.”
Left unchecked, codling moths would have caused tens of millions of dollars worth of damage to Okanagan orchards,
SIR officials say.
When the SIR scheme was launched, there were hopes the technology would be sold to other fruit-growing regions and used to help recover some of the expense associated with creating and maintaining the program.
Information from the SIR program is now being applied in places such as the U.S., South America and South Africa. But the most common form of codling moth control worldwide remains a mix of pesticides and traps placed in orchards.
There are 3,553 hectares of apples and pears planted this year in the Okanagan and Similkameen valleys, up 202 hectares from 2014.
“While it is perhaps a little too early to call the increase an apple renaissance, it is a positive trend for one of the Okanagan’s staple crops,” reads part of a summary of the most recent SIR board meeting.