Strawberry lovers and farmers will be happy to know that the Council of Agriculture yesterday unveiled a breed of Orius flower bug that is capable of eliminating strawberry thrips, a tiny insect that sucks the contents out of strawberries.
The council said the technology to breed the natural pesticide is now ready for transfer to businesses.
“By breeding hundreds of generations of the Orius strigicollis, we have developed a bug that can catch strawberry thrips and spider mites,” Miaoli District Agricultural Research and Extension Station assistant researcher Chang Guang-miao (張廣淼) said.
Thrips are one of the most common pests found on agricultural crops, including fruits, flowers and grains, Chang said. The type of Orius bug that has been bred by the research station targets strawberry thrips and spider mites, because strawberries are a major crop and widely planted in the Miaoli area, he said.
“Once a fruit has been damaged by a strawberry thrip, it either grows into an abnormal shape or hardens and loses its economic value,” Chang said.
The Orius flower bug breeds and matures very quickly so it can capture a good number of thrips and mites each day, Chang said.
“Mature female bugs can live for more than 30 days and males live for 10 days. Since each adult bug captures up to 20 thrips a day, about 300 thrips or 600 spider mites can be captured by each Orius flower bug over the bug’s lifetime,” he said.
The little six-legged bugs are also good news for strawberry lovers, as they will help reduce the amount of pesticide that farmers need to spray onto the fruits, Chang said.
READY: The CGA said it closely monitored China’s maritime exercise, deployed vessels to shadow the Chinese ships one-on-one and set up emergency response centers Chinese navy and coast guard ships have returned to China, signaling the end of a massive maritime exercise, authorities said yesterday. The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) released images it said showed Chinese vessels sailing north in rough seas past Taiwan on Thursday, on their way to China. “All the Chinese coast guard went back to China yesterday, so although they have not officially made any announcement, we consider it over,” CGA Deputy Director-General Hsieh Ching-chin (謝慶欽) said. Beijing has not confirmed the drills and the Chinese Ministry of National Defense did not say whether the maneuvers had taken place when asked at a
People can take the Taipei MRT free of charge if they access it at Nanjing Sanmin Station or Taipei Arena Station on the Green Line between 12am and 6am on Jan. 1, the Taipei Department of Transportation said on Friday, outlining its plans to ease crowding during New Year’s events in the capital. More than 200,000 people are expected to attend New Year’s Eve events in Taipei, with singer A-mei (張惠妹) performing at the Taipei Dome and the city government’s New Year’s Eve party at Taipei City Hall Plaza, the department said. As people have tended to use the MRT’s Blue or
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Taiwanese professional baseball should update sports stadiums and boost engagement to enhance fans’ experience, Chinese Professional Baseball League (CPBL) commissioner Tsai Chi-chang (蔡其昌) told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) in an interview on Friday. The league has urged Farglory Group and the Taipei City Government to improve the Taipei Dome’s outdated equipment, including relatively rudimentary television and sound systems, and poor technology, he said. The Tokyo Dome has markedly better television and sound systems, despite being 30 years old, because its managers continually upgraded its equipment, Tsai said. In contrast, the Taipei Dome lacked even a room for referees
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