Boll Weevil Eradication Program

The Boll Weevil Eradication Program is a program sponsored by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) that has sought to eradicate the boll weevil in the cotton-growing areas of the United States. It is one of the world's most successful implementations of integrated pest management. The program has enabled cotton farmers to reduce their use of pesticides by between 40 and 100 percent, and increase their yields by at least 10%, since its inception in the 1970s. By the autumn of 2009, eradication was finished in all US cotton regions with the exception of less than one million acres still under treatment in Texas.

Since its migration from Mexico in the late 19th century, the boll weevil had been the single most destructive cotton pest in the United States, and possibly the most destructive agricultural pest in the United States. The cost of its crop depredations has been estimated at $300 million per year. The control measures used have included a wide range of pesticides, including calcium arsenate, DDT, toxaphene, aldrin, dieldrin, endrin, heptachlor, malathion, and parathion. In 1958, the National Cotton Council garnered the Congressional support to create the USDA Boll Weevil Research Lab.

In 1959 J. R. Brazzel and L. D. Newsom published a paper outlining the winter dormancy (diapause) behavior of the boll weevil. Brazzel published the results of his first diapause control insecticide treatment trial in 1959, finding that methyl parathion treatments in the fall significantly reduced the overwintering population, especially when combined with plowing of the stalks into the ground. More sophisticated trapping and monitoring devices were developed over the next decade. Further progress was made when the male boll weevil pheromone was identified in the 1960s; the insects could be lured into traps baited with this pheromone, further reducing their reproduction, and enhancing the monitoring system.

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