Scent ‘camouflage’ keeps mice from destroying crops

House mice may look cute, but they’re little monsters when it comes to crops. The rodents destroy 70 million tons of rice, wheat, and maize each year by devouring and infesting stored grain. They also dig up and eat the seeds farmers have planted. Humans have been locked in a battle with these pests for millennia, using everything from cats to poisons. A new study may have found a better—and more humane—alternative: camouflaging fields with a scent that makes the seeds practically undetectable to mice. It’s a “simple but elegant” solution, says Nils Christian Stenseth, a biologist at the University of Oslo and an expert of rodent impacts on crops who was not involved with the work. The approach, he says, could be applied to other crop pests such as insects and rats. Mice rely on their sense of smell to find food. When it comes to wheat, that means sniffing out wheat germ, the embryo inside the seed that develops into the plant. House mice ( Mus musculus ) are an especially big problem in Australia, because they are not native. During years when their populations explode, the rodents can cause significant losses to the country’s $13 billion wheat harvest. Farmers in Australia have mainly tried to control the mice with poisons and pesticides, says Peter Banks, a biologist at the University of Sydney. But these chemicals have to be reapplied often, which gets expensive. They can also kill birds and other wildlife. ...
Source: ScienceNOW - Category: Science Source Type: news