In some areas of the world, pests are invading different types of crops and this is of major concern. Let’s see what’s going on.
Pests are certainly harmful to crops but their increase may be due to something wrong with the environment.
Take care of the environment
We often forget how important it is to take care of the environment around us that is our home. The earth, in fact, is one and only and all the actions we perform today could affect those who will live there in the future.
Yet, humans often (and willingly) indulge in neglect forgetting that there is no other planet to live on. Which causes unique disasters.
In recent months, in addition to the others numerous threats, field crops have come under fire due to a problem. Especially in the USA, some crops have been attacked by numerous insects and parasites. The crops that suffered the most were corn fields.
What parasite it is
The parasite in question has been identified by scholars as Helicoverpa Zea. The insect is capable of attacking up to over a hundreds of different crops: aubergines, tomatoes and peppers are some of these. It is not excluded that pests will soon head to new types of vegetables.
The adult specimens are they love to live at night. By reacting to light-type radiation when it is dark, they can be trapped by light traps, in particular, those with ultraviolet light. In addition to light, aggregation or sexual pheromones can be used to trap them.
The causes of their invasion are many but they are all connected to the state of the planet earth. One of the main problems is caused by the global warming. Being migratory parasites, they can move from area to area and prefer places where the climate is mild. The cold, in fact, would stop their development.
The more the areas with the mild climate increase, due to global warming, the more the parasites are able to choose more territories to occupy where to proliferate. Scientists at the University of North Carolina also found that heat can increase hunger in these insects.
Not only the US, other parts of the world have also been affected, even where the climate is notoriously cooler. These are Canada, Russia, Norway, Finland and Iceland.
Also, it can happen an opposite problem: if it hasn’t rained for a long time due to drought, some crops could disappear completely, contributing to the disappearance of many organisms essential for the balance of our ecosystem.