Young minds at work

Prof. Francesco Nardi (University of Siena) and Prof. Rossella Annoni (junior high school G. Falcone, Cassina de' Pecchi, Milan) have been working together, this past year, with class 2D (12-13 years old pupils) on Popillia within the context of the dissemination program 'a scientist as pen-friend'. Pupils have been engaged on the daily practices of a scientific project and have been presented the challenges and opportunities of Popillia control. This was, in full evidence, much more enthralling as the school is located in the area of Milan and the students have a direct experience of the pest. 

Students proposed two options of traps 

 In turn, two options were proposed by the students to control the pest, options that we wish to share with the Popillia community:

Trap number 1 builds over the design of commercial garden type attractive traps for Popillia. It is nevertheless larger in size and the underlying bag is replaced by a box. The said box is connected, through a temporized opening with a drain-pipe that funnels the dead bugs into a large container in the house's basement (see header image). A prototype is being built.

Trap number 2 builds over the 'popzuka' design by our colleagues in CREA (Florence), that is equipped with a pheromone capable of attracting adults. The net, that has insecticide inside, is in turn replaced by a colony of natural enemies. This design has the advantage to bring Popillia and its natural enemies in close contact, thus maximizing the effect, and does not rely on chemical insecticides altogether.

Considering that the two solutions are original products of the students (i.e. students have not been presented with any pre-determined solution by the instructors), it cannot be overlooked that the two solutions proposed closely resemble designs that have been actually considered in IPM-Popillia, namely mass-trapping and the popzuka.