Fungus weapon means death to swarming locusts

WASHINGTON (AP) - After thousands of years of burning them, burying them, poisoning them and even eating them, biologists have finally come up with a sure, safe way to kill one of humanity's most frightening scourges: the swarming desert locust.

For about the same cost as pesticide, the totally organic weapon also could get rid of those pesky grasshoppers eating the backyard garden.

Developed by international scientists and marketed as Green Muscle, the otherwise harmless, even edible, naturally occurring fungus already has been used to kill millions of locusts and grasshoppers in Niger and is ready to take on the next African or global invasion, which some scientists believe may be at hand.

Biologists from the Nigeria-based International Institute of Tropical Agriculture planned to announce at a World Bank scientific conference on Monday that the fungus is effective and can be developed for commercial uses.

The fungus has been in development for a decade. Its first application in commercial quantities came with a mass spraying of Niger farmland in August.

In recent months, unusually large numbers of grasshoppers or locusts have been invading parts of Africa, Argentina, Australia, China, Indonesia, Spain, Russia, Kazakstan and the United States. Recent drought and heat in Texas has spawned one of the worst grasshopper invasions in the last 30 years.

The bio-pesticide application in Niger, financed by Luxembourg, provided ''complete control'' that lasted up to three times longer than current chemical insecticides, said a report from Future Harvest, an international research groups on farming.

''This new product is environmentally sound. It kills grasshoppers and locusts and nothing else,'' said Jurgen Langewald, a German biologist who leads the program that developed Green Muscle from the fungus metarhizium anisopliae. It is harmless to other insects, plants, animals and humans and doesn't build up as a poison in the soil or waterways, he said in an interview.

''In fact, you can eat it,'' said Langewald, who also has tasted locust, the least efficient means of locust eradication. Fried in a savory oil, they taste a bit like shrimp, he said.

The anti-locust fungus was first identified at the Center for Agriculture and Biosciences International in Britain. Scientists later developed a way of mixing dry fungus spores with oil to create the dark green spray now called Green Muscle. Large-scale testing began in 1996, using aid groups and local farm associations in Africa.

The area of Niger used for the first commercial-scale application had been devastated four times by locusts between 1986 and 1989 and was hit again in 1992-93.

Over the last few thousand years, farmers have fought locusts with fires to scare them away, trenches to block the mass march of their young, and often-dangerous pesticides.

Acknowledging he has never seen a flying swarm of locusts himself, Langewald said accounts show they can be frightening. Locust clouds strip away all plant life and are so large they can block out light.

Locusts swarm in massive numbers only about every 10 to 20 years, when weather conditions are right in their breeding grounds, mostly around the Red Sea. The last mass swarming started in 1986 and covered more than 400 square miles from Senegal to India for up to three years. ---

On the Net:

International Institute of Tropical Agriculture site on locust bio-pesticide: http://www.cgiar.org/iita/research/lubilosa/index.htm

Future Harvest agricultural research site: http://www.futureharvest.org