COLLEGE STATION — Most of Earth’s worst insects could be controlled if agricultural and environmental leadership would provide the resources, according to noted scientist Dr. Edward F. Knipling.
“I don’t see any biological or technical barriers to accomplish control of most of the major pests,” said Knipling, in a telephone interview from his Arlington, Va., home. “Nature has given us the tools. We just need to shape them and use them in the proper manner.”
Knipling and colleague Ray Bushland are credited with developing in the 1950s the sterile insect method of controlling screwworms. At that time, the flesh-eating screwworm larvae were causing $250 million in annual livestock losses in the United States. Enormous eradication campaigns, however, eliminated the insect in the United States. Texas has not had an active screwworm case since 1982.
His work, which also enabled control of Mediterranean fruit flies in the United States and Mexico and melon flies in Okinawa, was honored recently with the prestigious 1995 Japan Prize, presented in Tokyo with a certificate of merit, a commemorative medal and $510,000.
“There still is much to be done to resolve insect pest problems in an environmentally safe and economically sound manner,” Knipling said, in accepting the award. “With the expanding world population, more and more food will have to be produced on diminishing agricultural lands. Preventing damage by insect pests can make important contributions towards meeting this requirement.”
Dr. Jiro Kondo, Japan’s Science and Technology Foundation chair, said the prize is given for outstanding achievements in science and technology that lead to “peace and prosperity for mankind.”
Knipling said the award was “most heartwarming” for an effort that began first on his boyhood farmstead near Port Lavaca and grew through college at Texas A&M and Iowa State universities during the Great Depression.
“I wanted to contribute to agriculture in ways other than pulling a cotton sack down the row,” Knipling said of his career choice after leaving the insect laden farmland along the Gulf Coast. “Entomology was a logical field for me to enter.”
It was not long after finishing his bachelor’s in entomology at Texas A&M in 1930 that Knipling, who had become an entomologist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, had the idea about sterilizing male flies, releasing them in large numbers to mate with the native females which then would not produce offspring thus significantly reducing the damaging fly population.
But it was several more years after World War II before Knipling and his colleagues were able to develop the research into fruition.
“It took several years of thinking and studying it and consulting with dozens of people before I got around to conducting research on the idea,” he said. “And it took thousands of people to develop the technology and put into practice this method.”
Knipling said the environmental safety of the method was a factor as much during its development as now.
He said his understanding of the limitation of chemical pesticides early in his career was the impetuous to change directions and search for alternative control techniques.
“The breakthrough in the mid-1940s in the discovery of effective chemical pesticides is something that society worldwide should be thankful for one of the reasons that agriculture has been able to keep pace with world food needs,” Knipling said. “But we realize that there are environmental problems and potential health problems that can arise from the extensive use of these chemicals.”
He believes that the method of rearing sterilized male insects could be used in conjunction with natural parasites to control pests such as tropical fruit fly, corn borers, sugarcane borers, bollworms and numerous other devastating insects.
“We must change from reactive pest management procedures based on the use of insecticides to low cost proactive preventive systems designed to keep pest populations below significant damage levels using biological means,” Knipling said.
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