The Pasture Mealybug <\/a>was first spotted last April. The grass-killing pest has been in Australia since the 1920s and was spotted in the Caribbean in 2019. It\u2019s currently unknown how it got to Texas.<\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s gonna be a tough insect to deal with,\u201d said David Kerns, an entomologist with the Texas A&M AgriLife Service. <\/p>\n
Kerns says the bug prefers dense grass. That\u2019s why they are encouraging farmers to manage their vegetation. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf you can eliminate the biomass, the population will be greatly reduced,\u201d said Kerns. \u201cIf the pasture\u2019s just not performing like it should be, it\u2019s just not growing like it should, or if you\u2019re starting to see some yellowing in areas, that\u2019s an indicator that there\u2019s probably pasture mealy bugs in that area.\u201d<\/p>\n
The USDA is currently working on a long-term biological solution for the bug. Kerns says they\u2019re encouraging farmers not to take tools that have been used in an infected pasture to another. <\/p>\n
If you suspect you have mealybugs in your grass, contact your local county extension agent. <\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 KLTV. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TYLER, Texas (KLTV) – As Texas battles the New World Screwworm, another bug threat is on the rise.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":371951,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[131725,115357,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-371950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-mealy-bug","tag-screwworm","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}