Rice leaf miner another hurricane casualty?

Will the South American rice leaf miner be affected by salt water pushed ashore by Hurricane Rita? LSU AgCenter entomologist Dr. Boris Castro said it’s possible the rice pest’s population could have been weakened by the high salinity, but there’s no way of knowing now because the insect has only been known to be in the country the past couple of growing seasons.

"We don’t know where it over-winters," Castro said, explaining the pest first appeared in 2004 but was not identified until 2005.

The LSU AgCenter researcher said he was surprised that the amount of damage in Louisiana rice fields increased significantly last year. "It was even worse than the year before," he said of 2004, when the pest first appeared buy had yet to be identified as the cause of damage.

At the Louisiana Agricultural Consultants Association convention in Alexandria on February 16, Castro said that the South American rice leaf miner inflicted most of its devastation on coastal rice fields. The insect also was found last year in North Louisiana, but it had little effect on rice fields there, Castro said, possibly because the insect seems to have a preference for more tropical environments.

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