Bioforest injects solution to pest management.It's made a tough plastic, almost fits in the palm of your hand and resembles a household lubricant oil can. But if it performs well in field tests this spring, a Sault-made insect pest management tool may save thousands of hardwood trees in the U.S. and Canada from becoming kindling kindling (kinˑ·dling), n change in brain function wherein repeated chemical or electrical stimuli induce seizures. kindling 1. parturition in the doe rabbit. . More than a few syrup producers are nervous the Asian long-horned beetle The Asian long-horned beetle(Anoplophora glabripennis), sometimes called Starry Sky (Sky Oxen in China) beetle, is native to China and where it causes widespread mortality of poplar, willow, elm, and maple throughout vast areas of eastern Asia. is making its home in the maple trees of New York's Central Park. However, a Sault forest and pest management company thinks their little invention is a solution to a big, big problem. BioForest Technologies Inc. has developed a specially-designed pesticide injector and plans to showcase it on the road this year with as many as 12 field trials scheduled in the U.S., Canada and possibly Europe. Joe Meating, BioForest's director of forest health management, says in only a matter of months, their injector and the accompanying development of an eco-friendly pesticide has nabbed people's attention. The eight-employee firm is getting a jump on spring by scheduling field trials for the injector over the next two months with U.S. government scientists, foresters and researchers in Kansas, Texas, South Carolina South Carolina, state of the SE United States. It is bordered by North Carolina (N), the Atlantic Ocean (SE), and Georgia (SW). Facts and Figures Area, 31,055 sq mi (80,432 sq km). Pop. (2000) 4,012,012, a 15. , Wisconsin and Minnesota as well as doing demonstrations for tree care equipment distributors. "We're pretty confident it will do a good job on a lot of different (infestation infestation /in·fes·ta·tion/ (-fes-ta´shun) parasitic attack or subsistence on the skin and/or its appendages, as by insects, mites, or ticks; sometimes used to denote parasitic invasion of the organs and tissues, as by helminths. ) problems," says Meating, a former Canadian Forest Service The Canadian Forest Service (CFS) is a sector of the Canadian government department of Natural Resources Canada. Part of the federal government since 1899, the CFS is a science-based policy organization responsible for promoting the sustainable development of Canada's forests and researcher. "We need to generate a lot of good information on its capabilities, where it works, how it works and where it doesn't work." Foresters in Chicago, New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of and other eastern states Eastern States can refer to several locations:
n. 1. An intense battle fought in close contact by troops arranged in a predetermined formation. 2. A fiercely waged battle or struggle between opposing forces. with the Asian long-horned beetle, a voracious black insect imported from China that bores into hardwood trees, especially maple. Since the beetle lives inside the tree, aerial spray programs--especially in concentrated urban areas--will not work and the first response is to cut down affected trees and burn them. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the potential economic cost of widespread infestation of this one bug is as high as $40 billion (US). [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Through the Canadian consulate in Chicago and that city's chief forester, BioForest made contact with the U.S. Forest Service and Meating was preparing for a presentation in Massachusetts in mid-March. The whole injector concept evolved from BioForest's work in the Muskoka-Georgian Bay cottage country where pest control problems near sensitive shorelines necessitated the need to treat individual trees, rather than resort to large spray programs. While working on an environmentally-friendly insecticide derived from the seed extract of the Southeast Asian Neem tree, which the company hopes to someday register as a legal commercial pesticide, one spinoff project was the development of the injector to physically apply the pesticide into the tree. They field tested a prototype last fall and recently took the first order of the injectors for demonstration purposes. "These things are amazingly tough and resilient," says Meating. "We think we can re-use these hundreds of times to keep costs down for the user." BioForest is writing a business plan with an interest in pitching it to the U.S. Forest Service as a means to control insects such as the emerald ash borer  This article or section may deal primarily with the U.S. and may not present a worldwide view. , gypsy moth, forest tent caterpillar and spruce bud worm. www.bioforest.org By IAN ROSS Northern Ontario Business Northern Ontario Business is a Canadian magazine, which publishes monthly in Greater Sudbury, Ontario. The magazine covers business news and issues in Northern Ontario. |
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