Other than the second coming of Carrie Nation and the rebirth of Prohibition, few things scare California vintners like the glassy winged sharpshooter.
No, it’s not the latest drone flying high overhead to blow up suspected terrrorists. It’s an insect about as long as your thumbnail, native to the southeastern United States and northeastern Mexico, that transmits Pierce’s Disease, which attacks grapevines and infests them with a bacterium that halts the flow of water within the vine, killing it within two years. To date, there is no known cure.
The nasty little suckers have already infested vineyards in Southern California, the Central Valley and even Santa Clara County, causing multiple millions of dollars of damage and the allocation of millions more dollars to combat the pest.
But now the solution may lie in the invention of a group of European scientists, who have figured out a way to disrupt the sex lives of the pests that threaten their vineyards, the grapevine leafhopper. You see, male and female leafhoppers communicate their readiness to get it on (as well as their location) by sending subtle vibrations, which are transmitted to the vines they’re inhabiting.
So the scientists developed an electromagnetic “shaker” that attaches to the wires holding up vines and sends out its own vibrations, vibrations that confuse the insects and prevent them from getting together to consummate their relationship, also preventing them from spreading their destructive bacterium.
It’s an invention so promising that the USDA has asked the scientists to work on rejiggering it to vibrate the sex life right out of the glassy winged sharpshooter. If it works, they won’t be shooting much of anything.