If kudzu itself were not bad enough, it now gives rise in Arkansas to the kudzu bug.
So named because it survives winters by snuggling in kudzu, the pest also has a hankering for soybeans -- a $2 billion crop here.
"We do have them in a couple of fields," Robert Goodson, an agricultural agent in Helena-West Helena for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, said Tuesday.
Arkansas farmers raise soybeans on more than 3 million acres, generating a large-enough haul to be the nation's 10th-largest soybean producer.
Are Goodson, his fellow agents and farmers the first line of defense in a battle to prevent the kudzu bug's spread deeper into Arkansas?
"They are known to spread into urban areas," Goodson said. "If home gardeners saw them on a flowering plant, they'd certainly be upset. But we are in a good time and place against them right now."
Goodson said the nymph, not the adult, threatens soybeans.
"All we have right now are adults, and we know where the eggs are," he said.
The farmers affected right now likely will start spraying the nymphs next week, Goodson said. Normal pesticides are effective on the bugs. "The key is killing them at the right time," he said.
The kudzu bug is native to China and India. Its presence in the U.S. was detected in fields outside Atlanta in 2009, leading experts to theorize it had arrived on an international flight. It then slowly began to spread across the Carolinas, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.
States hit first by kudzu bugs wasted time, money and effort by spraying the adults. States hit later learned from those errors.
In Arkansas, officials first found a handful of them in Crittenden County in 2013. A few more were found in Phillips County last fall, Goodson said. "We found a whole, whole lot more this year," he said.
Asked to define the threat of the bug on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the highest threat, Goodson put it at a 3 or 4, "because they're not widespread."
He said the bugs are good fliers, with a range of a couple of miles, and love to congregate, sometimes 20 or 25 to a plant.
Kudzu bugs also are partial to light-colored vehicles, providing another way for them to spread. Once situated, they even prefer light-colored houses.
Dead or alive, they have an odor similar to the common Arkansas stinkbug. Experts caution homemakers not to squash them because that will leave a stain. Any vacuuming should be done with a wet-dry vac and a solution of soap and water. A regular vacuum cleaner, if used, will smell like a kudzu bug.
They are pea-sized and appear, to some observers, like a cross between a tick and a ladybug because they are speckled on wide bodies of brown or olive green. Their mouths pierce and suck at foliage. Adults feed on the stem, while nymphs move to the underside of a leaf and suck at its veins. The plants then lose nutrients and moisture.
Adults, being mobile, will move on. The nymphs stay on a given plant, inflicting major damage.
Business on 07/13/2016