New Tool Could Stop the Spread of Main Xylella Fastidiosa Vector

A team of Italian researchers has devel­oped a new tool to com­bat Xylella fas­tidiosa. It aims at dis­turb­ing spit­tle­bug mat­ing, which is one of the main vec­tors of the bac­te­ria.

Xylella fas­tidiosa is a deadly pathogen that has infected 21 mil­lion olive trees spread over 183,000 hectares across south­ern Italy, accord­ing to the Italian agri­cul­tural asso­ci­a­tion, Coldiretti.

The new research area, known as biotremol­ogy, led sci­en­tists to inves­ti­gate the effects of sound vibra­tions on the insects and dis­cover how spit­tle­bug repro­duc­tion could be cur­tailed.

Researchers from the XF-Actors ini­tia­tive, the Edmund Mach Foundation, the University of Trento and the Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Bari focused on the impact spe­cific vibra­tions had on the species’ repro­duc­tion, bor­row­ing from the expe­ri­ences of its appli­ca­tion on vine­yard pests.

In the last decade, the effects of vibra­tional dis­rup­tion on the most dam­ag­ing insects to the country’s agri­cul­tural sec­tor have been inves­ti­gated.

“The insects use the micro-vibra­tions to com­mu­ni­cate,” Edmund Mach Foundation researchers said. ​“By inter­fer­ing with those com­mu­ni­ca­tions, the females of sev­eral insects can not receive the sig­nals from the males, which trans­lates in a rel­e­vant reduc­tion of mat­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties.”

In vine­yards, vibra­tional dis­rup­tion sig­nals are already being tested to reduce the use of pes­ti­cides. Experts believe that the same treat­ment could be used in Apulian olive groves to con­tain spit­tle­bug repro­duc­tion and the spread of Xylella fas­tidiosa.

“Scientists col­lected data on the vibra­tional com­mu­ni­ca­tion of Philaenus spumarius [the spit­tle­bug species] with a laser vibrom­e­ter through­out the year,” an XF-Actors press release said. ​“A con­tin­u­ous noise with a spe­cific fre­quency range could suc­cess­fully dis­rupt mat­ing by inter­fer­ing with the male-female com­mu­ni­ca­tion.”

While the sci­en­tists believe that these first results are encour­ag­ing, they high­light how fur­ther research on the new bio­log­i­cal tool is needed.

“The study is still ongo­ing and will cer­tainly lead to essen­tial sci­en­tific evi­dence for the fight against the vec­tor insect,” said Savino Muraglia, pres­i­dent of Coldiretti Puglia. ​“The impor­tance of sci­en­tific research in the fight against Xylella fas­tidiosa has been evi­dent for years and must be sup­ported with more fund­ing for lab­o­ra­tory research, mon­i­tor­ing and sam­pling activ­i­ties [that came as the result of] the €10 mil­lion allo­cated by the Olive Regeneration Plan.”

“The funds from the European Union des­tined for mon­i­tor­ing and sam­pling are just small change, being equal to €3 mil­lion for the whole Italian ter­ri­tory and des­tined to cover oper­a­tions about seven dif­fer­ent pathogens,” he added.

• XF ‑Actors
• Coldiretti
• Entomologia Generalis