Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services researchers, using 3D printing technology, have designed the “SmartTrap” to trap the Asian citrus psyllid, the insect responsible for spreading the bacterial disease citrus greening, according to the Daily Commercial.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has awarded the department a five-year $200,000 grant to continue improving SmartTrap’s design, while manufacturing and distributing the current prototype to researchers in citrus-producing areas, including Texas and California.
A major improvement with SmartTrap is that 99 percent of the insects collected are psyllids, a pin-sized insect that arrived in Florida in 1998, said Trevor Smith, chief of the Bureau of Methods Development and Biological Control at the Florida Agriculture Department.
Texas and California will receive about 20 SmartTraps, each to be manufactured in the first year of the program. Greening weakens a citrus tree, causing extensive fruit drop before harvest, and eventually kills it. The disease has cut the annual Florida harvest of oranges, grapefruit and tangerines by more than half.