Beetles Imported to Battle Whiteflies : Agriculture: Imperial Valley farmers hope the pest that has devastated their crops will be devoured by little brown insects from Israel.

Imperial Valley farmers, caught in the worst agricultural crisis this century, Monday pinned their hopes for the future on what looked like tiny specks of dirt.

Barely visible to the naked eye, the specks were ladybird beetles imported from Israel for a special mission: to destroy the silverleaf whitefly, which has caused more than $200 million in crop damage and sent the regional unemployment rate soaring to 33%.

One hundred of the small brown beetles were released Monday in 10 locations throughout the farming region, which, for the past three years, has been devastated by the whitefly, bad weather and an ongoing recession.

“It’s been like a triple whammy,” said Abdel L. Salem, the city manager in El Centro, where the jobless rate is three times the California average. “Just when you think it can’t get any worse, it does. We’re putting a lot of our hopes on the beetle.”

The beetle, whose scientific name is Serangium parcesetosum, has undergone tests for a year and a half at UC Riverside, where entomologists have monitored its success against the citrus whitefly, and, for the last six months, against the silverleaf variety.

Some of those scientists were at City Hall to turn 10 of the beetles loose inside a windsock-like sleeve placed over branches of hibiscus and orchid plants, both of which are big draws for hungry silverleaf whiteflies.

“We’ll let them do their work for about a month, then we’ll come back to check,” said entomologist Tom Bellows, to whose laboratory the beetles were imported from the fields of Israel, where they achieved remarkable success against the citrus whitefly.

Researchers will return to determine whether the beetles have laid eggs, at which time the sleeve enclosures holding them will be removed.

Fully grown, the beetles are no more than two millimeters in size. Once set free inside the sleeve, they aggressively went to work, feasting on even smaller white specks--the nymphs, or offspring, of the silverleaf whitefly. Although the adult whitefly is almost twice its size, the beetle can gobble up even the more mature variety.

Still, Bellows said that in a best-case scenario, it will take at least a year before the ladybird beetle has an effect on agriculture in the troubled valley.

“The whitefly has caused an insurmountable amount of economic damage to our region,” said Imperial County Supervisor Dean Shores, who estimates the loss for 1991 at $137 million, with an additional $100 million in damage recorded since last April.

Ninety-eight percent of the area’s normally rich melon crop was lost in 1991. Struck by the futility of trying to raise crops against such odds, farmers last season opted to plant fewer than 100 acres of melons, instead of the usual 15,000.

Thomas Perring, an entomologist at UC Riverside, said Monday that the silverleaf whitefly has now caused as much as $750 million in crop-related damage across the southern United States. In California, the bug has been detected in the Imperial, Coachella and Palo Verde valleys, and in parts of the southern San Joaquin Valley.

“But no area has been harder hit than ours,” Shores said. “We’re hoping this is another tool that will work. If we can reduce the amount of pesticides we’re using to control the whitefly--and, shall I say, failing miserably--we’ll have succeeded far better than we ever have before. We’re just praying it works.”

Melons, cotton, alfalfa, broccoli, carrots, cabbage, cauliflower--all have been sorely affected in this flat corner of the state, known to many as the nation’s winter salad bowl.

The area has been troubled for years by the poinsettia whitefly and the sweet potato whitefly, but the team from UC Riverside discovered about a year ago that the silverleaf is a separate species and far more virulent than the others.

By now, almost everyone in this dusty desert community is aware of the fly’s reputation.

Jack Armstrong, 80, a retired farmer who for years was one of the county’s leading harvesters, said the silverleaf whitefly has been the valley’s most horrific nuisance, surpassing even the so-called mosaic fungus (named for the pattern it left) that plagued the cantaloupe crop from 1955 to the mid-1960s. “It’s real, real sad,” Armstrong said.

The whitefly has also devoured employment opportunities for Jose Rojas, 41, and many of the dozens of others who were waiting in line Monday at the city’s unemployment office. As the clerks behind the window confirmed, one of every five Imperial County residents is now receiving food stamps.

“I’m so tired,” he said. “I’ve been without a job for so long. I just keep wondering when it will get any better, or if it ever will.”

Whitefly Warrior

Here’s a look at the insect imported to take part in a test against a crop-devouring pest.

Name: Ladybird beetle.

Scientific name: Serangium parcesetosum.

Country of origin: Israel.

Mission: To destroy the silverleaf whitefly, which has devastated $750 million worth of agriculture in the southern U.S.

Size: 2 millimeters. The adult silverleaf whitefly is almost twice the size of the beetle that consumes it.