US scientists have said the alien insect that Bangladeshi professionals have identified as the dangerous giant mealybug is actually a mango mealybug.
A swarm of the insect, said to have originated in Africa, recently scared the students of a college in Dhaka, forcing authorities to shut the it down for a while. Before that, a large number of these insects were first reported at a naval base in the city.
Entomologists from the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI), Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University and the government’s Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) identified the insect as giant mealybug and said it was alien to Bangladesh. They said the insect might have travelled here with the baggage of the Bangladeshi soldiers returning from UN peacekeeping missions in the African countries.
The quarantine section of the Bangladesh government’s plant protection wing recently sent samples to the agricultural research services of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).
On May 9, the US service said in a report that the scientific name of the insect was Drosicha mangifera, commonly known as the mango mealybug.
The Dhaka Tribune has obtained a copy of the letter that the US scientists have sent to the Bangladesh government.
Joe Floyd, a domestic diagnostics coordinator of the USDA in Maryland, sent the letter to MonzurulHoque, an entomologist posted at the quarantine wing of the Dhaka airport. Monzurul sent the samples in March.
Ahsan Ullah, a quarantine entomologist of the DAE, told the Dhaka Tribune that initially, the Bangladeshi scientists thought it was the giant mealybug, but the US report said something different.
“We talk on the basis of expert opinion. The USDA is the world leader in this area; so I think their report is right,” he said.
Debashish Sarker, a BARI entomologist who was part of the team that detected the insect as giant mealybug, told the Dhaka Tribune that he had no idea about the USDA report.
He has also been involved with controlling the pest that has recently attacked the Jatiya Sangsad premises.
“Mango mealybug and giant mealybug belong to the same family,” he said.
When asked why they had said it was giant mealybug, Debashish said the BARI had sent a sample to the commonwealth agricultural wing to know more about it.
“Let the report come,” he said.
