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McALLEN — The U.S. Department of Agriculture is doubling down on its fight against screwworm.
On Tuesday, the USDA announced new approaches to combat screwworm, including using AI drones to monitor wildlife and enlisting the help of 40 research projects that would be funded via a grant program launched earlier this year. Additionally, the agency said it is in talks to partner with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to deploy the AI-controlled drones.
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said additional details, including other strategies to eradicate screwworm, would be forthcoming.
“It’s going to a whole new level of partnership,” Rollins said during a call with reporters on Monday.
The USDA expects to provide more details on the potential partnership with DHS later this week when Rollins plans to visit South Texas. DHS did not respond to questions about the drones.
So far, screwworm has not been detected in U.S. wildlife, though the USDA has tested suspected cases from several states, including Texas. All were negative for screwworm. In Texas, screwworm was initially found in cattle and other agricultural animals.
New World Screwworm is a type of blowfly that targets mammals. Its threat to the multibillion-dollar cattle industry has rattled ranchers and others in agriculture.
But wildlife pose a more difficult challenge in tracking and controlling screwworm.
During a previous infestation of screwworm in Texas, in the 1950 and 1960s, white-tailed deer and rabbits were the most common hosts for the pest.
However, the wildlife landscape in Texas has changed since then, driven partly by the captive wildlife industry, which includes excotic game ranches and captive deer breeding.
Another factor is the growth of the wild pig population which tends to grow rapidly because they lack a natural predator. Between 1982 and 2016, their population grew from 2.4 million to about 6.9 million, of which 2.6 million are estimated to be in Texas, according to Texas Parks & Wildlife.
Grand Challenge
The USDA is also funding 40 new projects to help in the fight against screwworm through a grant program it launched in January called the Grand Challenge, which invited farmers and researchers to apply for financial support for their projects.
The initiative awarded $105 million to researchers of the 40 projects to develop their proposed solutions. Those solutions fall into four categories — enhancing sterile fly production, developing novel traps, researching and testing screwworm treatments, or developing other tools to bolster preparedness response.
Scientists consider the use of sterile flies as the most effective method of eradicating screwworm. Male sterile flies are released for the purposes of mating with female screwworm flies so that they produce unviable eggs that can’t develop into the larvae that feed off the flesh of live mammals.
The awarded projects consist of a variety of solutions, including developing male flies with hyper-active sex drives, and enhancing or developing methods to lure and trap flies.
Others propose using a minimum-risk insecticide to combat screwworm in livestock and wildlife, detecting wounds using artificial intelligence, using drones to monitor screwworm flies, using insect-killing fungi to control screwworm and using dogs to detect and locate screwworm.
“These are the kinds of innovations that will help us stay ahead of this pest and protect our food supply and our economy, protecting the way of life of our ranchers and go towards rebuilding our cattle herd to lower consumer prices on grocery store shelves,” Rollins said in a news release Tuesday. “We know we have tried-and-true tools and methods to defeat this pest, but we must constantly look for new and better methods and innovate our way to success.”
The 40 recipients are largely universities across the country including five in Texas — Texas Tech University, Texas A&M University, the University of Texas at Arlington, the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.
Other recipients include biotech companies, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, the USDA’s agricultural research service and the Minnesota Board of Animal Health.
Reporting in the Rio Grande Valley is supported in part by the Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas, Inc.