A South African country has developed the strategy of jumping over drones to protect one of the victims from Befall.

A South African economy has developed a strategy, Raubwespen over Drohnen to settle, one of the Rebernte for Befall to schützen.

As part of SkyBugs, a joint venture of FieldBUGS, a unit installed in Kapstadt, the Raubinsects were prepared, and the Agrartechnik-Unternehmen Aerobotics, that is, with a group of drone operators working together, an effective insect control unit was set up.

In several regions, including South Africa, the raubwasps have been used as a tool for the Schädlingsbekämpfung. Laut Matt Davis, head of mapping operations at Aerobotics, flew SkyBug drones 30 meters above the Weinberg and started a “motorized device with a cartridge”. When the motor is released, roll up a plastic sheet and release the substance (the substance grows larger and more mature).

Each mission covers about 20 hectares, and 500 Anagyrus wasps, which are secretly in South Africa, were released per hectare, before the drone lands, the team can extinguish the battery and the insect card. Data can be done with an app.

The Soul of Wasps is the last MincingBecause the damaging Wein-Krankheit can spread like the Blattroll virus, the combined Traubenertrag was damaging.

For farmers, the virus and the mechanisms to identify and combat it can be time-consuming and labor-intensive. SkyBugs argued that the use of drones is faster and more cost-effective than the spraying of insects, which can be harmful to the environment and useful insects.

After the Freisetzung has developed as adult Wasps, the Pheromones of the Mehl-tauschädlinge are sucked in. The Wasps-laying Eggs in the Mehltauschädlingen is a fressen of the interior – a precursor, the parasitic can focus on and weld in their Wirt hohl and to zurück.

Says Rudolf Kriel, vitikulturist at Vergelegen: “The Blattroll virus has been virtually eliminated on the farm.”

Taking care of the predator’s habitat

The Vergelegen team has been working with virologist and leafroll virus expert Gerhard Pietersen for over 20 years. He was previously a professor at the University of Pretoria and the University of Stellenbosch. Pietersen founded a biotech company called Patho Solutions to continue combating agricultural diseases.

“Grapevine leafroll associated virus-3 (GLRaV-3) or ‘Type three’ is an extremely damaging virus in grapevines,” Pietersen explains. “The virus reproduces itself in the vascular system of the plant, preventing nutrients from circulating. The weakness of the virus is that its only natural host is the grapevine. Not all plant viruses have such host restrictions.”

“The consequence of a pest is that the grapes ripen unevenly on the bunch, do not reach the desired colour and it takes a long time for the sugars necessary for winemaking to be formed,” he adds.

In case of infection of a vine, signs of the virus can be seen with the naked eye. The leaves turn red in autumn and show green veins, followed by a slight drooping of the leaves.

“Attempts to remove an infected vine and replace it with a new one often prove ineffective if pieces of the infected vine are left in the ground,” Pietersen said.

He suggests that the best way to combat this virus is “to remove all infected vines in a vineyard, along with controlling the mealybug vector. This is best done across an entire estate, but this is not economically viable as the initial costs of starting over are very high.”

Using wasps to eradicate the virus could be an effective solution, as they are native to the area and should not have any unintended consequences if released in larger numbers into the vineyards, he says. “The wasps only feed on mealy bugs and then die.”

Farmers in the region, who grow fruits such as apples, pears and citrus fruits, are using drones to spread predatory insects into their orchards to control pests.

An important market segment

According to Vinpro, a non-profit organisation representing nearly 2,600 South African wine producers, wineries and industry stakeholders, South Africa is among the world’s 10 largest wine producers. The country harvested about 1.2 million tonnes of grapes last season and employed nearly 270,000 people in the value chain.

Vinpro describes the leafroll virus as harmful to the wine sector, which also faced a smaller harvest in 2022-2023 due to weather conditions.

Rudolf Kriel, winegrower at Vergelegen, explains that a healthy vineyard can remain productive for more than 20 years, but a vine infected with leafroll virus type 3 will last only half as long and will produce little or no yield in its final years.

Vergelegen maintains a program of various methods to combat the virus, and Kriel says the data shows that there is less than 0.05% leafroll virus infection in red grape varieties and less than 0.3% in white varieties. “The leafroll virus has been virtually eradicated from the farm,” he says.

Pietersen adds that Vergelegen is “regarded worldwide as the model estate for combating leaf roll disease in an ecologically sustainable way.”

Controlling the virus could have benefits beyond improving grape yields; it could also improve wine quality. According to a blind taste test conducted by Stellenbosch University, using grapes picked from both infected and healthy vines, “the freshness seems to be clearly present in the wine produced from healthy vines,” Pietersen says.

The effectiveness of wasps in controlling mealybugs and the resulting leafroll virus is not limited to vineyards. Farmers in the region who grow fruit varieties such as apples, pears and citrus fruits have also started using drones to deploy predatory insects for pest control in their orchards.

The serious spread of the Blattrollen virus in the South African Weinbergen, where it is located, can no longer be caused by trauma, but the quality of the vines produced. A blind tasting test at the University of Stellenbosch is very useful when we have had a healthy meal that has put a big end to the Frische aufwies.

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