Volunteers in Italy and Spain to Track Spittlebug Activity

Volunteers mon­i­tor­ing small pieces of land in the Italian region of Puglia could become an essen­tial part of the effort to stem the spread of Xylella fas­tidiosa.

The inde­pen­dent mon­i­tor­ing orga­ni­za­tion, Info Xylella, has put out a call for vol­un­teers to track the Philaenus spumar­ius, the insect known for being the pri­mary vec­tor of the deadly plant pathogen.

Volunteers would mon­i­tor pieces of land near which they live. Organizers said the ini­tia­tive would result in a new level of mon­i­tor­ing and a deeper under­stand­ing of the spit­tle­bugs’ habi­tats and behav­iors. The appeal for vol­un­teers comes as the insects steadily approach their adult stage this year.

The so-called ​“cit­i­zen sci­ence” ini­tia­tive will include sci­en­tists, agron­o­mists, agri-tech­ni­cal experts, farm­ers, stu­dents and ordi­nary cit­i­zens.

“Following sim­ple instruc­tions and a video tuto­r­ial, they will be able to find the cor­rect loca­tion, exe­cute their mon­i­tor­ing oper­a­tions reg­u­larly and send in their pho­tographs and data through Whatsapp or by email,” the appeal read.

All the data will then be ana­lyzed, sum­ma­rized and pub­lished by sci­en­tists from Italy’s National Research Council (CNR), the Basile Caramia research cen­ter and the regional asso­ci­a­tion, Arptra.

In Puglia, requests for sup­port funds from farm­ers affected by Xylella fas­tidiosa have grown 30 per­cent for the 2018/19 crop year when com­pared to 2016/17, a sign of the wors­en­ing sit­u­a­tion for Apulian olive grow­ers who are respon­si­ble for more than half of Italian olive oil pro­duc­tion.

“This sea­son, [the new mon­i­tor­ing net­work] will be put to the test,” Info Xylella wrote. ​“We shall have to ver­ify its poten­tial and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties and will use the expe­ri­ence to upgrade the sys­tems and the pro­to­cols for the mon­i­tor­ing, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and ana­lyz­ing the result­ing data. We aim to offer sound new infor­ma­tion from this year on.”

One of the goals of the mon­i­tor­ing net­work is to bet­ter iden­tify the best period for tak­ing mea­sures to reduce the spread of the spit­tle­bug.

Other goals include gain­ing deeper under­stand­ing of the spit­tle­bug population’s evo­lu­tion in Puglia and cre­at­ing a data­base that will be used with the cli­mate data to fore­cast the insect’s devel­op­ment states.

The pro­mot­ers hope that the ini­tia­tive ​“will increase pub­lic involve­ment and aware­ness about the need to act urgently, and espe­cially all together, through a com­mu­nity pact to counter the epi­demic and defend the econ­omy and land­scape of our ter­ri­tory.”

The province of Taranto has been the lat­est in Puglia to be afflicted by the spread of the spit­tle­bug, with sev­eral munic­i­pal­i­ties in the province ask­ing author­i­ties to declare a state of emer­gency.

According to the local branch of the farm­ing asso­ci­a­tion Coldiretti, the Xylella fas­tidiosa infected area has been expand­ing toward the west of cen­tral Puglia, near Avetrana, Manduria, Sava and Maruggio.

Coldiretti said that the mon­i­tor­ing oper­a­tions con­ducted last year found 314 new olive trees infected by the pathogen.

“These new infec­tions con­firm the spread of the dis­ease in the Taranto area, toward Matera,” Savino Muraglia, pres­i­dent of Coldiretti Puglia, said. ​“That makes it even more urgent to sup­port local farm­ers to help them diver­sify their agri­cul­tural activ­i­ties and build a real­is­tic future.”

In a sep­a­rate spit­tle­bug mon­i­tor­ing ini­tia­tive in Spain, offi­cials in Andalusia also asked for vol­un­teers.

The Andalusian Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Sustainable Development’s project involves using a mobile appli­ca­tion to help mon­i­tor for the pres­ence of the spit­tle­bug and other insect vec­tors of the dis­ease. So far, no sign of Xyella fas­tidiosa has been found recently.

According to Life Resilience mag­a­zine, the mobile app will allow farm­ers, agri­cul­tural experts and the pub­lic to gather evi­dence on the pres­ence of nymphs of sev­eral vec­tor insects.

The devel­op­ers explained that this new ver­sion of the appli­ca­tion adds a spe­cific area ded­i­cated to mon­i­tor­ing Xylella fas­tidiosa. The infor­ma­tion avail­able includes maps show­ing where and how many pests and pathogens have infected local crops.

Among the fea­tures is the abil­ity to access the data com­ing directly from more than 200 cli­mate mon­i­tor­ing sta­tions, which the devel­op­ers said ​“are strate­gi­cally placed in the fields and equipped with elec­tronic sen­sors that pro­vide the nec­es­sary infor­ma­tion to con­trol pests and dis­eases.”

• Info Xylella
• Quotidiano di Puglia
• Life Resilience