
China Drone Attack on Crop-Eating ‘Monster’ Shows 98% Kill Rate - pseudolus
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-02/china-drone-attack-on-crop-eating-monster-shows-98-kill-rate
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theboywho
Why not mention the startup name instead of saying China, which just makes it
sound like if the Chinese government is behind it ? Do Chineses newspapers say
US phone instead of iPhone ?

~~~
Negitivefrags
This is a really common thing with articles about Chinese companies. People
seem to collectively equate them to the government. Perhaps it’s a holdover
from communism?

For example, people will say things like “Reddit is controlled by China” when
in reality Reddit has an investment from Tencent, not China.

~~~
meowface
Some percentage are mixed in with the government pretty tightly, though, and
the ones who aren't can effectively be assumed to pass any kind of data to
them, or be forced to do their bidding if the occasion ever arises. That's
true in the US, too, of course, but at least in the US the companies can
(secretly) fight it out in court, and actually sometimes win.

~~~
rayiner
> That's true in the US, too, of course,

Do people really believe still this, or is this something everyone says
reflexively to avoid committing the faux pas of coming across as believing
that the U.S. is better than a communist country? Trump should have exploded
this idea. He can't even get his own executive bureaucracy, which he is
theoretically in charge of, to do his bidding, much less random U.S.
companies.

~~~
meowface
Of course the situation is far, far worse in China than in the US, but look at
some of the recent-ish litigation involving corporations and the NSA and FBI
to see what I mean. Who the current president is has little to do with it.

If I hadn't added that, I would've received the opposite comment about
American bias towards China.

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gene-h
This isn't that new, Yamaha has been selling a remotely controlled helicopter
specifically made for applying insectcide on crops since 1991[0]. They were
even used in aerial robotics research for a bit[1]. Helicopters are
particularly nice for spraying crops because you have a nice turbulent
downwash that pushes the pesticide onto the crops.

[0][https://www.yamahamotorsports.com/motorsports/pages/precisio...](https://www.yamahamotorsports.com/motorsports/pages/precision-
agriculture) [1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_R-
MAX#Research](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_R-MAX#Research)

~~~
conjectures
Were they autonomous?

~~~
entangledqubit
They weren't. The crop dusting was done under manual control. Around 2005, you
could semi-easily get a flight control unit to put on the research version.

Add a laser scanning system and direct the system to fly into a building...
from flights back around 2006-ish:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Skdh4Nwm6r4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Skdh4Nwm6r4)

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TheRealPomax
Ah yes, Bayer Crop Science. The science division of a company that likes
Monsanto's business model so much, they bought Monsanto. Good to see they
found a fresh market for releasing "low-toxicity insecticide" into the food
chain.

~~~
febeling
Understand the sentiment. But applying it selectively seems to be desirable,
no matter how euphemistic the low-toxicity part is.

~~~
acadien
The article said nothing about selective dispersal. For all we know these
drones are just fancy crop dusters.

~~~
ijpoijpoihpiuoh
From what I can read of the press release, they are claiming a reduction of
30% in the amount of pesticide used. So, a significant incremental
improvement, but certainly not something truly smart like using a camera to
identify individual pests and targeting those pests with directed blasts of
insecticide. Still a few years from that version of this tech.

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ben7799
This is pretty interesting to read... I think our media normally ignores North
American pests travelling to other parts of the world.

Around here we have a lot of talk about pests that have arrived from China
that affect our local plants but not many that talk about our pests that have
invaded China.

Locally I've had to deal with the Asian Winter Moth decimating trees in my
yard and throughout the area I live in. That seems to have gotten under
control the last few years though interestingly.

And of course everyone knows about the American Chestnut tree and the blight
from China that wiped it out.

~~~
seszett
I guess most people just know best about what pests affect their area. Here in
France, phylloxera is well known for having decimated our vines after having
arrived from America (what saved the French wine industry was grafting our
species on the roots of phylloxera-resistant but unpalatable American vines).

Same for the Argentinian ants that have founded the supercolony along the
Mediterranean coast.

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zupzupper
> phylloxera-resistant but unpalatable American vines

Hey now. You send me a palatable French wine and I'll send you a palatable
American one =)

~~~
bthecohen
This is actually referring to different species of grapes, and has nothing to
do with winemaking technique or prowess.

Virtually every type of "quality wine" that is consumed in the world comes
from the old world species _vitis vinifera._ This includes basically every
variety you've heard of: Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, Syrah,
Merlot, just to name a few French varieties (but the same applies to Italian,
Spanish, German, etc. wines). Any American winemakers making those kinds of
wines (and I agree that many New World wines go toe-to-toe with the best
France has to offer!) are using grape vines that were originally imported from
Europe.

In addition, there are several species of grapes that are native to North
America, the best known of which is probably the Concord grape. Unfortunately,
due to their flavor profiles these species don't tend to be used for
winemaking (one exception being Manischewitz and other sweet ritual wines).
However, they have a natural resistance to phylloxera, which saved _vitis
vinifera_ from decimation and likely extinction through the grafting
technique.

~~~
zupzupper
I did not know this.

However I would still like to exchange bottles with other fellow =)

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Bjorkbat
Don't get too excited. We don't know the full story on the 2% that lived. For
all we know, they could become tomorrow's 20% that developed pesticide
resistance and rampaged through China's countryside.

~~~
ScoJoh
That was exactly my thought. It's like DDT on Mosquitoes. The ones that
survived were resistant, so when they bred, all their offspring were
resistant.

Could end up being the same issue here, so this could easily become a FAR FAR
worse issue in the next generation or two of these worms.

~~~
papreclip
My brother worked in a mosquito lab for a while and said that mosquitos lose
these resistances pretty quickly (as a population) if they aren't regularly
being dosed. In the absence of pesticide, the more efficient organism is
generally the one without whatever metabolic fluke made it immune to the
poison.

The lab helped inform the city's strategy for fighting mosquitos, which was to
rotate pesticides. I believe they also bred and released neutered mosquitos.

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davidhyde
That’s got to win the click bait title of the day award! Despite the alarming
title, it’s refreshing to read a neutral article about China. Neither good nor
bad, just interesting.

~~~
papreclip
Chinese drone attack with 98% kill rate [screaming face emoji]

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whatshisface
Drones have very short flight times and can't carry that much weight. Can this
really be cheaper than driving a tractor around?

~~~
ticmasta
The challenge is getting the tractors into the right locations and keeping
their operators out of the spray. It would be harder to get precise
application so they are more likely to use more and higher concentrations of
pesticide.

The most cost-effective response using traditional application of pesticides
is probably bigger drones (aka a flying tractor)

~~~
sukilot
Remote-control tractor seems simple enough.

~~~
Loughla
We pretty much already have remote control tractors via autosteer. The
operator is a meat weight making sure nothing catches on fire.

Autosteer, of course, is only useful off of public roads, what with all the
pesky pedestrians and other vehicles.

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dre85
I'm a bit disappointed that there's no mention of mini laser cannons strapped
to these drones. That would be way cooler, especially at night, and much more
environmentally friendly compared to pesticides.

~~~
maerF0x0
Would the equipment and batteries required work with drones?

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WiseWeasel
Maybe a spike on one side of the drone, and it flies into the target. Or a
spike shoots out one side, along with a counterweight motion, and then
retracts.

Edit: on second thought, it’s likely less practical to impale the things than
to inject a small dose of poison or electrocute them or something, and it’s
probably easier to use a ground-based robot for such precision tasks, with
less energy and mass constraints.

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ropiwqefjnpoa
Targeted use of low toxicity pesticide with a 98% effective rate? More of
this.

~~~
Shivetya
as with most claims outside verification would be nice and as with most
promising outcomes what will be the effects ten to twenty years out. there is
no text about what other insects may be affected by this insecticide

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ian0
> the “ravenous, fast-moving fall armyworm” that can fly up to 100 kilometers
> in one night

Thats some distance. Assume thats only possible if greatly aided by the wind?

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newsreview1
This is fascinating. I'm extremely curious about the technology. How big are
the drones, and how can they carry enough insecticide to cover a large area?
Drones make sense to replace laboour-intensive and potentially harmful
traditional backpack sprayers. I am curious as to affordability of this type
of technology, and use outside of Asia. Can anyone point me in the right
direction to read up on North American use?

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mxuribe
> ...The fall army worm, a crop-devouring pest, has spread from the Americas
> to Africa and Asia...

So, is this like a new version of the Stuxnet worm? But in this case, its
delivery mechanism uses almost-nano-size robots, and its target is foreign
crops and not centrifuges? </sarcasm>

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dplgk
Sad that the technical details are missing. How are the drones finding and
targeting the worms?

~~~
m-i-l
It seems the drones are simply spraying insecticide, rather than anything more
sophisticated such as plucking the caterpillars off the plants or shooting
them with high pressure water jets. The advantage of drones over human pilots
spraying insecticide appear to be that they are easier to get on site and can
fly at night, allowing them to use lower strength insecticide.

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on_and_off
Fascinating read.

I wonder if we could eliminate invasive species that way in a more general
way.

They tend to wreck havoc on local ecosystems and are unmanageable.

I wonder if they would not just evolve to evade ML detection or if that's too
high of a wall to jump.

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netsharc
Hah, worms with CV Dazzle camouflage...

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b_tterc_p
There are reasonable concerns about using genetic modifications to kill things
like mosquitos, but why don’t we use this tech against invasive species which
we want to be absolutely removed from an ecosystem?

~~~
wysifnwyg
It's due to the concerns that a genetically modified species may return to the
native ecosystem and decimating their natural habitat.

~~~
btilly
It would be simple to solve that with a breeding population kept isolated. If
the genetic modification wipes out the wild population, you reintroduce it.

For species that reproduce quickly, such as insects, this is reasonable.

That said the mosquito trick is that we can produce drones whose babies are
also only drones with the same genetic malfunction. The number of drone-only
mosquitoes expands exponentially until they are most of the males, then most
of the population, and then in a couple of more generations, the population is
wiped out for lack of females.

I'm not sure that this would work as well for a species that moves more
slowly. Or whether we know how to do the trick for species other than
mosquitoes.

~~~
cestith
This is also balanced by the fact that as far as we know, most any mosquito
can fill most of the same roles in the food chains. We're mostly concerned
with wiping out the few species that feed on humans and our pets/livestock. We
could eradicate two or three species which carry West Nile, Malaria, Zika,
Chickungunya, and a few other really bad diseases of humans, dogs, cats,
songbirds, horses, and cattle that are spread by mosquitoes. Other species
would still lay eggs, hatch, and get eaten or reproduce normally without
threat to us.

~~~
btilly
Also note that despite the technique being proven in the lab, and the fact
that mosquitoes kill a half-million people per year, we have not yet pulled
the trigger and done it. Exactly for fear of the potential ecological
consequences.

~~~
cestith
That, too. Good point.

BTW, thanks for all your time on PerlMonks and here. I didn't even notice who
I was replying to the first time.

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unnouinceput
So how this compares with having a very low tech solution instead, like the
one using pipes in the field that can spray the insecticide in the same amount
as a drone does?

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sjg007
Pipe in the field can be damaged during farm operations like field prep,
planting and harvesting etc... they also get clogged by dirt and in many
jurisdictions you can't send pesticide down a water irrigation pipe for
example. For some farms that would also be a lot of pipe to lay. So overall
just a really bad idea.

~~~
unnouinceput
Think plastic pipes that can be laid out/taken out at beginning/end of season.
Low tech/cheap being the key element here, same as targeted irrigation, where
only a sliver of water goes directly to the roots, only in this case it will
be pesticide targeting directly the crop. Drones sounds for me way too
expensive.

~~~
sjg007
You got to spray the whole plant amigo. you are talking tons of pipe. It’s
acres and acres of row corn.

~~~
unnouinceput
Yup, agree. You might not be used to hard work but I am and I know those acres
and acres are a 2, maximum 3, days of laying the pipes. And you know what also
they are good for? Targeted irrigation as well. Shoot 2 rabbits with one
bullet amigo. I wanna see you do irrigation and spraying pesticides using your
drones and lets talk the cost of water + drones at the end of the season vs.
my approach.

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ph0rque
Next step: make it completely environmentally friendly by using lasers instead
of chemicals, followed by a flock of geese to eat the roasted worms :D

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Animats
Are they just aerial spraying, like crop-dusting, or are they identifying
individual army worms and zapping them?

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goda90
Aerial spraying at night which is when the worms feed. Normal insecticide
application happens during the day and to be effective they spray a lot more.

~~~
Animats
That makes sense. Especially if you're not farming big flat fields, where a
pickup truck and a spray rig can do the job at night. China has limited arable
land, and farms terrain no one would bother with in the US.

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OrgNet
An army of small toy drones or large army drones? (ie: localized poison
spraying VS large area)

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ajudson
Hopefully this turns out better than when Mao killed all the sparrows

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afapx
They claim 98% but that's only the ones they know about

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jakedata
In other news, insecticide resistant armyworms soon to be decimating crops
across China as several thousand resistant individuals remain to breed with
local populations after each application of pesticide.

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mark_l_watson
So, the drones spray Monsanto/Bayer insecticides.

I have to remind myself whenever I see Bayer, that they bought Monsanto so
deserve any bad karma they got in the deal. Hear Bayer, think Monsanto.

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benkarst
Hmm, can we make the title more a little more click baity?

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Willson50
This seems dangerous in the hands of a nationalistic government.

~~~
bdamm
If this scares you then you probably shouldn't watch Slaughterbots:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CO6M2HsoIA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CO6M2HsoIA)

