Japanese Knotweed And Aphalara itadori: The Showdown In The UK

Have you been constantly frustrated by the energy and time, not to mention the money, that you put into completely removing Japanese knotweed from your backyard, just to find the area green and healthy with new sprouts one or two days after?  This weed has been a great headache in United Kingdom for sometime.  Not long after its introduction in the 1800’s, the plant has raided many of United Kingdom’s land area and wastelands.  It has posed a real danger to the local plant species since they are highly resilient to most methods of eradication.  They crowd out local plants and lessen the species range in the region.

There have been numerous means used to handle the spread and growth of the invasive Japanese knotweed, from pesticides to thoroughly eliminating the plants to adding its natural parasite, Aphalara itadori.  These psyllids, as they are known, are sap-sucking insects which are also belonging to Japan from where the weed also came from.  Aphalara itadori  is called jumping plant louse. The premeditated introduction of this psyllid is supported by scientific studies from CABI however not everyone are amenable to the idea.

The study has reached over some six years, experimenting more than 200 control measures and has decided that the jumping plant louse is the best option amongst all these.  It further lays down the justification that renders this psyllid the perfect choice, which is the reality that it is a sap-sucking insect, thus it is host limited.  This is to calm down arguments that the insect might relocate to native plants once it is introduced into the ecosystem.  The insect will slow down its growth and make it less competitive.  The insects will suck the juice from the plant during their larva stage.  These may not totally destroy the harmful weed.  The purpose is to render them more adaptable and make the preventive method more maintanable in the long run as well as cheaper.  An incredible total of roughly 1.6 billion pounds a year is used up on eradicating Japanese knotweed.

The addition of a non-indigenous species into the UK presents a biological threat, a lot of doubting Thomases declare.  What happened to Australia after introducing cane toads being a natural pest control for beetles in 1935, only turned into an environmental menace today, may also happen in United Kingdom.  Another case was the introduction of harlequin ladybirds in several European countries for ecological control but it only took them little time to cross over the English Channel and placed the British ladybirds at stake.  Japanese knotweed removal by the addition of the jumping plant louse is going to be a long deliberation.  The showdown of these two, the Japanese knotweed and its arch rival, the jumping plant louse, will not happen in the near future.