ISCA is a world leader in bug birth control

ISCA Inc. is a world leader in applying safe insect pheromones to control the world’s most damaging invasive insects. The US Forest Service now aerially applies SPLAT GM, ISCA’s pheromone control for the destructive gypsy moth, Lymantria dispar, over hundreds of thousands of acres of US woodlands every year. These applications are in 10 states between the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean and are a pillar of the Forest Service’s “Slow the Spread” gypsy moth control program. Once applied, droplets of SPLAT GM slowly release micro plumes of synthetic gypsy moth sex pheromones throughout forests. The male gypsy moths then follow these false trails and live out their short lives without finding females for mating Slow the Spread is the largest such bug birth control program in the world. ISCA’s role began with a grant in 2006 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and was followed by several years of collaboration with the Forest Service to determine the optimal SPLAT GM formulation and application methods. We are now launching several other environmentally safe pheromone controls for the world’s major pests of vineyards, orchards, and row crops that−like SPLAT GM− are efficiently applied by aircraft or drones. Such safe and sustainable controls are greatly needed worldwide as more and more damaging insects develop resistance to conventional pesticides that also pollute the environment.