The Agricultural Research Service (ARS) opened the Knipling-Bushland U.S. Livestock Insects Research Laboratory this week in Kerrville, TX, which is expected to provide innovative tools and advanced technologies that will help manage and eliminate invasive flies and ticks that threaten the U.S. cattle industry. The new 52,000‑square‑foot laboratory offers cutting‑edge research space and advanced cattle facilities.

Research opportunities will involve improved surveillance and trapping tools, novel insecticides and acaricides, enhanced pesticide delivery techniques for cattle and wildlife, sustainable treatments to prevent and mitigate outbreaks of invasive/quarantine arthropod species, improved approaches to combat pesticide resistance, and insect genomics to identify pest vulnerabilities.

The facility also houses two ARS research units: the Livestock Arthropod Pest Research Unit and the Veterinary Pest Genetics Research Unit. Collectively, these labs will help protect livestock and the U.S. food supply from devastating arthropod pests, including biting flies, ticks and New World screwworm (NWS).

The laboratory is named after two pioneering USDA researchers, Edward F. Knipling and Raymond C. Bushland. In 1937, Knipling developed the theory that screwworms could be controlled using the sterile male technique. In the early 1950s, Bushland successfully demonstrated that theory worked. This biocontrol technique, known as sterile insect technique (SIT), became the keystone component of the strategy that eventually led to the eradication of the screwworm from the U.S, Mexico and Central America. Nearly 80 years later, SIT still is being employed to fight NWS in Mexico and Central America, in an effort to keep the devastating insect from reestablishing itself in the U.S.