A Comprehensive Physiology - Toxicology Program for Arthropod Pests Significant to Texas
Grant
Overview
Affiliation
View All
Overview
abstract
Arthropod pests are a continuous and serious threat to humans, livestock and crops; therefore, their management is vitally important to sustainable production of food and fiber and for public health. The PI will continue to develop a comprehensive program on arthropods important to human and animal health and agriculture. The PI's program is centered in the Grand Challenges identified by the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at TAMU: 1) Feeding the world, 2) Protecting our environment, 3) Improving our health, 4) Enriching our youth and 5) Improving our economy. Specifically the PI is strongly positioned for the first three, with emphasis in arthropod vectors of disease, and decreasing the burden of insecticide resistance both in agricultural and urban pests, which in turns protects the environment and health by avoiding application of ineffective pesticides.The thrust of the program in basic research is the characterization of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) in different arthropod species, mainly fire ants, mosquitoes, ticks and lepidopterans. On the applied research aspect, projects are dedicated to pesticide resistance in the bollworm Helicoverpa zea and in the future, the sugar cane aphid (proposal submitted to NIFA/AFRI 2018). Work continues on cattle fever tick receptors to finalize projects that started in the previous cycle and were funded by the USDA-AFRI grants. The work on mosquitoes is under the CDC Western Gulf Center of Excellence in Vector Borne Diseases.
