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Ticks and grassland

This issue of World Animal Review contains two items of interest which, taken together, could well have considerable significance for future livestock development in tropical and sub-tropical regions.

The article “Beef cattle production from improved pastures” by P. Gillard of the CSIRO Division of Tropical Crops and Pastures working in Queensland, Australia, describes how legumes from the genus Stylosanthes have been introduced and used in the improvement of natural grassland. Such grassland covers a vast region of northern Australia and has characteristics similar to those of natural grasslands elsewhere in the tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world which, unimproved, are mainly responsible for the prevailing low levels of livestock production. Some of the latter areas already have species of Stylosanthes growing in them, others may be areas into which, as in the case of northern Australia, species of Stylosanthes can be successfully introduced.

Under ‘Publications’ of this issue, a brief account is given of an interesting report in Nature (Vol. 295 of 28 January 1982) by R.W. Sutherst, R.J. Jones and H.J. Schnitzerling of the CSIRO Divisions of Entomology, and Tropical Crops and Pastures, in Queensland, Australia, in which a description is given, resulting from observation and experiments, of how certain highly productive, nutritious varieties of Stylosanthes, which are covered with glandular trichomes or hairs, secrete a sticky, viscous fluid giving off a so far unidentified vapour which immediately immobilizes the tick larvae which have ascended the plant to transfer to a passing host and poisons them within 24 hours. This report concluded that “if the results described for Stylosanthes are reproducible in the field, it may be possible substantially to reduce tick populations throughout most of the tropics and sub-tropics. The legumes not only trap larval ticks but also improve cattle nutrition which should enhance their resistance to ticks.”

While much experimental work would have to be undertaken under the local conditions of particular regions in order to identify those Stylosanthes species suitable for the regions concerned and to make sure that they possessed the characteristics described above, the idea of controlling ticks by the use of leguminous plant species, which not only grow in the grasslands but improve them, is certainly attractive.

The cost of controlling ticks by chemical spraying and dipping becomes an ever increasing burden on stockowners and governments, especially in developing countries, while the development of resistance by the ticks to the chemicals used introduces an increasingly difficult complicating factor. Future work and progress of CSIRO in the two research fields described above will, therefore, be followed with the greatest interest by all those in any way concerned with livestock production and development in tropical and sub-tropical regions. The results of progress made in these two fields could be of very great benefit to the peoples of these regions.


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