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Dogs may help hound out vine pest in bark-to-bark effort
RUTHERFORD, Calif. - California vintners are going to the dogs in their fight against a new pest menacing state vineyards by training golden retrievers to sniff out the grape bane.
The dog squad, still in the pilot stages, is one of a number of strategies being considered to stop the vine mealybug, a little insect with the potential to stir up big trouble in wine country.
Small and secretive, vine mealybugs hide under roots and bark where they're virtually impossible to see with the human eye. Dozens of the males can fit inside one inch and given that inch, they'll take an acre, feeding on vines and producing a sugary excretion known as honeydew that encourages the growth of sooty mold and turns vine and grape cluster into a sticky mess.
Once established, it takes a considerable blast of pesticides to get rid of the bugs, an unpopular resort for an industry that has been moving toward using less chemicals.
"The vine mealybug poses a huge threat to our progress toward both sustainable and organic farming practices," says Jeff Erwin, deputy agriculture commissioner for Napa County.
The vine mealybug showed up in Southern California more than 10 years ago and has been moving north, showing up in some prime grape-growing areas.
Ag officials in Napa have been running an intensive vine mealybug trapping and detection program for two years, putting more than seven traps per square mile of vineyard. So far, they've found 37 infestations, mostly involving fewer than 50 vines. County officials don't have official damage estimates, but Erwin says some growers have had to jettison damaged grapes.
Preventive efforts underway include using traps baited with a female pheromone to catch the males, which can determine if an infestation is present. Another approach is to try to control the ants that serve as vine mealybug protecters, fighting off predators to keep the supply of sugary honeydew coming.
But perhaps the most intriguing of the programs is the bark-to-bark approach of having dogs sniff out the root of the problem in the early stages.
"I like the fact that it's dogs. It gets away from chemicals," says Elaine Honig, creative director at Honig Vineyard & Winery, which plans to use the trained dogs if the program is successful. "How wonderful to be able to solve a problem, have it be fun, have it be scientific and have it be good for the environment."
Like fine wines, these puppies have good noses.
"A third of their brain is their olfactory system. There is no machine that can detect odor anywhere near their capabilities," says Bonnie Bergin, founder of the Assistance Dog Institute in Santa Rosa, which is conducting the training.
Growers in Napa and Sonoma counties have donated nearly $30,000 for the first year of training and are discussing raising more funds, said Jennifer Kopp, executive director of the Napa Valley Grape Growers Association.
So far, the dogs have been taught to identify the female mealybug pheromone and recently made the leap to identifying a piece of infected stock, much trickier since it meant dealing with competing, real-life smells such as mold and wood - "This was huge," says Bergin.
Field tests could begin later this year.
Erwin is intrigued by the possibilities, which could result in helping growers find vine mealybugs early enough that removal would be a relatively simple matter of removing a few vines or treating a small area.
"When you have a pest like vine mealybug," he says, "you look for all the possible ways of mitigating the damage and in our case we would love to see vine mealybug eradicated from Napa County."