Genetically engineered agricultural pests

[asiaticdarkperson]

So, I guess Iranians have been cultivating walnuts for at least a couple of thousand years, and today there's at least a few walnut trees on any farm and orchard pretty much anywhere in Iran. Up until a few years ago any Iranian farmer would have told you that the walnut is the most resistant crop-tree as it has no pests. Walnuts commonly live to be over 200-300 years old in these parts.. err used to.

For the past few years an unusually large wood-eating moth has been ravaging the walnuts in Iran. Personally, I've got 20 hectares of walnuts all going to shit right now.

This moth lays its eggs inside the tree (the wood) and these small white worms once hatched proceed to eat the tree from the inside out. Once they enter the main stem or large branches they tunnel their way around eating the live wood until they're ready to become moths. The tree on the other hand starts bleeding a black sap from the holes where the worms entered.

The tree continues to bleed black blood until it dies.

The word on the street here is that the Israelis engineered this hellish creature, which measures 2-3 inches in length and whose wings are covered in leopard spots; hence the name given to it here "Leopard Moth."

Backed by the government, the farmers have tried and tried to protect their trees from this god-awful pest to no avail, because once the worms enter deep into the wood they become untouchable, invincible.

The city of Saman in Chaharmahal & Bakhtiari houses hundreds of thousands of walnuts, some older than the United States of America. Some of these trees produce hundreds of kilos of dried walnuts per year. My firsthand estimate is that these trees will all be gone in a few short years.

Anyway, I'd just like to thank the Israelis (or God?) for destroying these trees (and my income.) It seems like this is gonna be my last year as a farmer.

All I can do at this point is watch my babies (yes, they are my babies) bleed to death. A fitting end to a shitty year.

Sorry for the negative vibes.

[asiaticdarkperson]

Ok so there's actually more to be said here..

They say that in the old days all kinds of fruit trees thrived in the rich alluvial valleys of the Iranian plateau. Countless qanats (artificial springs) provided endless fresh water, and the abundance of sheep and goats guaranteed well-fertilised topsoil.

Seemingly, and this is what all the old folks claim, back then there was simply no need for pesticides or chemicals of any kind; the trees very rarely got "sick," and the winters were always extremely snowy (ie. up to 500mm and even 1000mm of snow per winter in some areas) hence the qanats were always bursting with water till the end of the dry season.

And so the orchards and gardens of Iran have historically been immensely productive, yet of exquisite beauty at the same time. You name it, there's apples, pears, apricots, almonds, grapevines, peaches, sweet and sour cherries, plums, figs, black and white mulberries, walnuts, pistachio, quince, date palms, etc. etc. etc. (really, there's even some that have no english name that i'd never seen or heard of before)

But it seems that in modern times, especially in the past couple of years, the number of pests and illnesses afflicting fruit trees has increased dramatically. Now there's everything from nematodes, fungi, virii, beetles, moths and as yet unidentified creatures parasitizing and killing all species of fruit trees without discrimination.

As I stated before, diseases afflicting walnuts were unheard of in these parts since ancient times, let alone any illness that could kill them!

It's possible that these creatures have always been here without attacking fruit trees.. it's possible that their habitat has been destroyed recently and so they turn to the only food available in the desert. It's equally probable that they are new, introduced species..

Regardless, what I have observed is much more than just pests destroying crops. It seems the whole web of life is changing. The domesticated herbivores systematically graze every inch of productive land, leaving absolutely nothing for their wild counterparts. Thus the wolves, leopards, cheetahs and all the other hunters of the desert starve. (This has already come to pass, sadly)

This pattern is repeated all over the Iranian landscape. Once the natural ecosystem is gone, all that is left is the orchards and crops of man.

The ancient woodlands of northern Iran stand a fraction of what they were 50 years ago when the Shahs of Persia hunted bears and tigers in the forest to pass the time. Today, thousand year old trees are being cut to build fences; fences to keep cows from wandering away. The forest has been divided between the cow herders, each of them destroying their allotted area pragmatically and systematically.

[asiaticdarkperson]

For the past decade Iran has been facing a drought that is still getting worse. The winters are now much warmer hence there's not as much snow as there used to be.

This lack of snowfall in the winter has caused the qanats to run dry in many places all over Iran. Where they have not dried up their flow has noticeably diminished.

The qanat is ancient technology for deriving water from the earth's crust without pumps. There must be thousands of qanats spread over the entire Iranian plateau, which is largely bone dry in terms of surface water and practically uninhabitable otherwise.

I think it's safe to say that every village here has at least a couple of qanats, drawing ground-water from the surrounding elevations. (No matter where you are in Iran, there's always some high mountains a short distance away) Some towns and villages have up to 100 qanats, comprising tens of thousands of deep and shallow wells and thousands of miles of interconnecting tunnels.

The water from all of Tehran's old qanats put together would result in a decent river.

So, when a qanat dries the people are forced to move away. This has already happened in certain areas bordering the kavir desert and the lut desert.

And on another note, the lack of precipitation has resulted in the widespread loss of the scrub oak of the Zagros mountains. These trees are a relic from a vast ancient forest, now limited to a handful of places scattered over hundreds of miles.

The lack of moisture has killed thousands of these trees in the past decade, and the ones that are left suffer from extreme stress brought about by dehydration. In this stressed-out, weakened state these trees have become susceptible to insects, disease, etc. etc. and are dying off at a staggering rate.

These oaks will soon be extinct for all practical purposes.

[karlsie]

Asi, i discussed your initial post with a friend of mine, and climatic factors was one of the possibilities we speculated upon. Another one is hitch-hiking bugs. There are many insects Alaska did not have when it was first settled by Western civilization. Cockroaches, crickets, fleas, black widow and brown recluse spiders were among the bugs we did not have. Only the black widow and fleas have not been able to survive our winters. Each spring, a few are introduced through airplanes, automobiles and luggage, but the black widow and fleas die off by mid-winter. The rest have been able to make it by living in and around residential areas.

Another bug we did not have was the spruce beetle, but it found its way up here about ten years ago, killing off about two-thirds of our spruce trees. This was followed by a worm that attacked our birch. One that came through last year killed all our apples and our blueberries. None of these insects made it through our very harsh winters, but during the length of time they were here, they did a lot of damage.

Radiation could also be playing a role in mutating insects, weakening trees and contributing to climate change. The world is changing radically, becoming more hostile to the various life support systems. It annoys me to hear people continue to say, "it's not our fault", because it is our fault. Whatever we do in one part of the world affects the rest of the world eventually.

[asiaticdarkperson]

A delight to hear from you again karlsie. Hope you are well.

Personally, and I've seen hundreds of these leopard moths, I just can't swallow the idea that this is a "natural" creature. I've never seen such a grotesque and large moth in my life.

And since Israel and the US are spending millions designing spage-age viruses to wreak havoc on Iran's computers, I don't think it's much of a stretch to assume they are working on many fronts.

This moth is highly aggressive. Once one tree is infected, all will be infected. And the worms have an unsatiable apetite. They keep eating and eating until the wood becomes too hollow to support its own weight and thus entire branches just snap off. I know there's like thousands of hectares of walnut forests in Kyrgyzstan (north-east of Iran) I'd hate to think what would happen to them if this bug found its way there.

I can't say I'm surprised that you're losing trees as well. I figured if its happening here it must be happening elsewhere too.