They're only about as long as a dime is thick, but the tiny green invaders who first made their presence known to Beaumont-area farmers in 2013 are attracting the attention of agricultural scientists across Texas, who are looking for explanation into their rapid appearance and what might be done to stop them.
Last year, Dr. M.O. Way - a researcher and professor of entomology for the Texas AgriLife Research and Extension Center in Beaumont - got a call from a Liberty County farmer who found the leaves of his sorghum plants teeming with minute green trespassers. They were attached to the underside of the grains' leaves, where they were leeching the juices from it.
In short order, reports of the aphids began cropping up all along the Texas Gulf Coast, in Louisiana, Mississippi, southern Oklahoma and at least one state in Mexico, according to the Lubbock-based Sorghum Checkoff group.
Last year's outbreak had little noticeable effect on the crop's production nationwide, but a coalition of agricultural researchers and scientists are busy arming themselves against the possibility that the aphids could become a problem in the future.
Some 2.3 million acres of grain sorghum - a drought-resistant grain popular in gluten-free food products and livestock fee, among other uses - were harvested in Texas last year, making the Lone Star State among the top producers in the nation, second only to Kansas, which produced 2.8 million acres of harvest.
Particularly in Southeast Texas, sorghum - a tall plant with long, drooping leaves topped by a cone-shaped head of tiny kernels - is a second-growth crop that emerges from the stubble left behind after primary crops are harvested, AgriLife Extension's Way said.
In that way, it adds an extra financial boost to farmers who get two crops from a single field.
There's no reason for alarm that the internationally important crop will be severely impacted by the bugs, Way said. Still, researchers in all the plant's habitats are launching a campaign to better understand the enemy and what could be done to curb their numbers should they launch another assault on a multimillion dollar industry in Texas.