The likelihood that a self-fueling vehicle will be used for exploration is improving, he says. For years, tomato growers have been searching for ways to handle their insect problems without using pesticides. Whiteflies damage plants by piercing leaves, sucking vital fluids and potentially transmitting viruses. They exude a sticky substance called honeydew that turns leaves black, cutting off the light the plant needs for photosynthesis. Most of the chemical sprays that kill whiteflies also kill the bumblebees that pollinate the tomatoes in greenhouses.
Parasitic wasps seem to offer a solution.
Yet with careful monitoring both exotic and domestic species are becoming successful biological control agents on greenhouse tomatoes in the U.S. Southwest and in Europe. Oscar Minkenberg, a UA College of Agriculture entomologist, and his staff raised nearly 30 million wasps last year for release in commercial greenhouses and research facilities around the world. That's the startling conclusion of a study by J. Lyle Bootman, dean of the University of Arizona College of Pharmacy. When humans and rattlesnakes occupy the same spaces, the snakes are usually the losers in the battle for territory. In the Tucson area each year, firefighters are called on to relocate thousands of rattlesnakes away from populated areas.