Have you been endlessly irritated by the time and energy, not to mention the money, that you put into totally eliminating Japanese knotweeds from your garden, only to discover the spot healthy and green with fresh shoots a few days after? This weed has been a great problem in United Kingdom for a moment. Not long after its introduction in the 1800’s, the plant has raided many of United Kingdom’s wastelands and land area. It has presented a real threat to the native plant species as they are extremely resilient to several techniques of control. They displace native species and lessen the species range in the area.

There have been numerous methods employed to handle the growth and spread of the invasive Japanese knotweed, from herbicides to thoroughly removing the plants to adding its real parasite, Aphalara itadori. These psyllids, as they are known, are sap-sucking insects which are also native to Japan from where the weed also came from. Aphalara itadori is named jumping plant louse. The premeditated introduction of this psyllid is backed up by scientific studies from CABI however not everyone are ecstatic to the idea.

The study has spanned some six years, testing over 200 control means and has decided that the jumping plant louse is the perfect option amongst all these. It further specifies the justification that renders this psyllid the best choice, which is the reality that it is a sap-sucking insect, therefore it is host specific. This is to pacify claims that the insect may transfer to native plants as soon as it is introduced into the ecosystem. The insect will impede its growth and render it less competitive. The insects will sip the juice from the plant in their nymph stage. These may not absolutely destroy the harmful weed. The purpose is to render them more manageable and render the control process more sustainable in due course in addition to more economical. An incredible sum of almost 1.6 billion pounds a year is spent on getting rid of Japanese knotweed.

The addition of a non-indigenous species into United Kingdom presents a biological threat, many skeptics proclaim. What happened to Australia after introducing cane toads being a natural pest control for beetles in 1935, only to become an ecological threat today, may also occur in United Kingdom. Another case was the addition of harlequin ladybirds in some European countries for ecological control but it only took them a short time to cross over the English Channel and placed the British ladybirds at stake. Japanese knotweed removal by the addition of the jumping plant louse is going to be a long deliberation. The confrontation of these two, the Japanese knotweed and its leading enemy, the jumping plant louse, will not occur soon.