India takes initiative for developing regional cooperation in controlling Desert Locust

• India has reached out to Pakistan and Iran as desert locust is spreading in the region and threatening crops in these countries and elsewhere.
• Billions of insects forming swarms that spread over hundreds of thousands of acres have swept into Yemen, Iran, Pakistan, and India, threatening harvest.
• To further regional cooperation India has proposed “coordinated response” to desert locust control to Iran and Pakistan.
• India has suggested to Pakistan that both countries coordinate locust control operation along the border and that India can facilitate supply of pesticide Malathion to Pakistan.

• Locusts are part of a large group of insects commonly called grasshoppers which have big hind legs for jumping.
• The Desert Locust is one of about a dozen species of short-horned grasshoppers (Acridoidea). Locusts differ from grasshoppers in that they have the ability to change their behaviour and habits and can migrate over large distances.
• The Latin name for Desert Locust is Schistocerca gregaria (Forskal).
• Locust swarms can vary from less than one square kilometre to several hundred square kilometres. There can be at least 40 million and sometimes as many as 80 million locust adults in each square kilometre of swarm.
• A Desert Locust adult can consume roughly its own weight in fresh food per day, that is about two grams every day. A very small part of an average swarm (or about one tonne of locusts) eats the same amount of food in one day as about 10 elephants or 25 camels or 2,500 people.

• As per the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) reports, in Iran, hopper bands of the locust are maturing along the southwestern coastal plains, and another generation of breeding is underway in the southeast where hatching is taking place on the coast and in the interior of Sistan-Baluchistan.
• In Pakistan, adult groups are migrating to the India border from breeding areas in Baluchistan where hopper groups are present as well as in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan.
• The FAO reports indicate that the desert locust population is expected to move from spring breeding of Balochistan to summer breeding along India-Pakistan border.

• During quiet periods (known as recessions) Desert Locusts are usually restricted to the semi-arid and arid deserts of Africa, the Near East and South-West Asia that receive less than 200 mm of rain annually. This is an area of about 16 million square kilometres, consisting of about 30 countries.
• During plagues, Desert Locusts may spread over an enormous area of some 29 million square kilometres, extending over or into parts of 60 countries.
• This is more than 20% of the total land surface of the world. During plagues, the Desert Locust has the potential to damage the livelihood of a tenth of the world's population.

• There is no evidence that Desert Locust plagues occur after a specific number of years.
• Instead, plagues develop intermittently. Plagues of locusts have been reported since the Pharaonic times in ancient Egypt.

• A Desert Locust lives a total of about three to five months although this is extremely variable and depends mostly on weather and ecological conditions.
• The life cycle comprises three stages: egg, hopper and adult. Eggs hatch in about two weeks (the range is 10-65 days), hoppers develop in five to six stages over a period of about 30-40 days, and adults mature in about three weeks to nine months but more frequently from two to four months.

• Desert Locusts usually fly with the wind at a speed of about 16-19 km/h depending on the wind.
• Swarms can travel about 5-130 km or more in a day. Locusts can stay in the air for long periods of time.
• For example, locusts regularly cross the Red Sea, a distance of 300 km. In the past there have been some spectacular and very long distance swarm migrations, for example from North-West Africa to the British Isles in 1954 and from West Africa to the Caribbean, a distance of 5,000 km in about ten days in 1988.
• Solitary Desert Locust adults usually fly at night whereas gregarious adults (swarms) fly during the day

• As Desert Locusts increase in number and become more crowded, they change their behavior from that of acting as an individual (solitarious) insect to that as acting as part of a group (gregarious).
• The appearance of the locust also changes: solitary adults are brown whereas gregarious adults are pink (immature) and yellow (mature).
• Up until 1921, it was thought that the Desert Locust was actually two different species of locusts.

• At present the primary method of controlling Desert Locust swarms and hopper bands is with mainly organphosphate chemicals applied in small concentrated doses (referred to as ultra low volume (ULV) formulation) by vehicle-mounted and aerial sprayers and to a lesser extent by knapsack and hand-held sprayers.
• Extensive research is in progress on biological control and other means of non-chemical control of locusts.
• The current focus is primarily on pathegens and insect growth regulators. Thus far control by natural predators and parasites is limited since locusts can quickly migrate away from most natural enemies.
• Although giant nets, flamethrowers, lasers and huge vacuums have been proposed in the past, these are not in use for locust control.
• People in several countries collect locusts using large nets and by other means. Locusts are usually stir-fried, roasted or boiled and eaten immediately or dried and eaten later (see some recipes below).
• Locusts are rich in protein. During periods of increased locust activity, piles of dead locusts can be found in the market places of many locust affected countries.

• India has a Locust Control and Research scheme that is being implemented through the Locust Warning Organisation (LWO), established in 1939 and amalgamated in 1946 with the Directorate of Plant Protection Quarantine and Storage (PPQS) of the Ministry of Agriculture.
• The LWO’s responsibility is monitoring and control of the locust situation in Scheduled Desert Areas mainly in Rajasthan and Gujarat, and partly in Punjab and Haryana. The LWO publishes a fortnightly bulletin on the locust situation.

There are many reasons as to why it is difficult to successfully combat the Desert Locust. Some of these are:

• the extremely large area (16-30 million sq. km) within which locusts can be found,
• the remoteness and difficult access of such areas,
• the insecurity or lack of safety (such as land mines) in some areas,
• the limited resources for locust monitoring and control in some of the affected countries,
• the undeveloped basic infrastructure (roads, communications, water and food) in many countries,
• the difficulty in maintaining a sufficient number of trained staff and functioning resources during the long periods of recession in which there is little or no locust activity,
• political relations amongst affected countries,
• the difficulty in organizing and implementing control operations in which the pesticide must be applied directly onto the locusts, and
• the difficulty in predicting outbreaks given the lack of periodicity of such incidents and the uncertainty of rainfall in locust areas.

• One of the mandates of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations is to provide information on the general locust situation to all interested countries and to give timely warnings and forecasts to those countries in danger of invasion.
• Therefore, FAO operates a centralized Desert Locust information service within the Locust Group at FAO Headquarters, Rome, Italy.
• All locust affected countries transmit locust data to FAO who in turn analyze this information in conjunction with weather and habitat data and satellite imagery in order to assess the current locust situation, provide forecasts up to six weeks in advance and issue warnings on an ad-hoc basis.