In 2012, Chandler Bennet was in an integrated pest management class at Cal Poly studying beneficial insects that are used to control populations of other insects, or bio control. Drones were just starting to gain traction at the time and Chandler saw an opportunity to utilize the new technology with what he was learning in class.
At that point, drones were mainly used for video purposes, but Chandler envisioned a different use for the technology — one that would benefit farmers and ease the process of spreading bio controls in an agriculture setting.
The Salinas-based ag technology company, Parabug, founded by Chandler, is the world’s largest beneficial insect application company in the world, according to the Parabug website. Their goal is to give farmers a tool to apply bio controls, via bug drone, in a more cost effective manner than hand application, Chandler said.
“Historically, bio control has been applied by hand, which is very time consuming, requires lots of labor, both of which are now very expensive and also scarce,” Chandler said.
With their drone technology, Parabug is working to make biocontrol usage more cost effective, especially in certain crops that would be difficult and cost prohibitive to apply bio control by hand.
Bio control is typically used for crops like strawberries and citrus, according to Chandler, who majored in agricultural systems management at Cal Poly and graduated in 2014. Parabug is able to cut down on some of the economic barriers presented by hand application of beneficial insects, so farmers can use the technology in crops like almonds, corn and soy, Chandler said.Â
Parabug’s website states “the future of farming is smarter than you think,” evidenced in the technology Chandler started prototyping while juggling classes at Cal Poly. After trialing the technology in Cal Poly’s strawberry fields, Chandler decided to move forward with the process of turning Parabug into a company. In 2016, he began the patenting process and made the drone technology commercially available to farmers.
The Parabug team consists of founder Chandler Bennet, his wife Jaclyn Bennet, the general manager of Parabug, who met Chandler in 2010 while in a soil science class at Cal Poly, and Kevin Hill, the head pilot and operations manager, who was Chandler’s roommate in SLO, according to the Parabug website.
The patent-pending Parabug technology works like a “salt shaker,” Chandler said. Drones are equipped with a plastic tube that has holes in a spiral orientation around the body. As the tubes spin in flight, the drones release bugs into the field in a uniform manner, according to Chandler.
Predatory mites are the most typical insect practiced in bio control, followed by lace wings and parasitoids, according to Jaclyn.
Jaclyn describes bio controls as “hunters,” working in the fields to seek out prey — the target pest the bio controls are applied against.
“We use these tiny little wasps that actually inject their own egg into that pest egg, and then the predatory insect egg eats the inside, and then emerges as an adult,” Jaclyn said. “We call them parasitoids, because they parasitize that egg, and in some cases they are literally just hunting and completely devouring the bug that they’re after.”
Research plays a primary part in the common use of predatory mites in the field, according to Jaclyn. The research motivates Chandler to collaborate with UC Cooperative Extension to research the use of lacewings in vegetable crops and hopefully drive their use going forward.
Lacewings, or aphid lions, work like “tiny alligators” in lettuce crops by grabbing aphids with their pinchers, sucking the juices out of the insect and discarding the carcass, according to Jaclyn.
“They seek, and so since they’re hunters, they’ll actually get down further into a head of romaine lettuce — farther than sometimes you’ll be able to get some of the chemical controls too,” Jaclyn said.
Jaclyn, who studied horticulture science and plant protection at Cal Poly, said it is a common misconception that farmers cannot use chemical pesticides in tandem with biocontrols. Oftentimes, the biocontrols utilized by Parabug will target a different life stage of the insect than the chemical controls used by the farmer, meaning the two management strategies work to complement each other.
“In some systems, we are able to help growers eliminate some of their, say, miticide applications. That’s just kind of one example,” Jaclyn said. “Using bio controls has been found to be comparable to a grower standard pesticide application. It might save them some money, so cost efficiency is a big one.”
As general manager of Parabug, Jaclyn works to help farmers implement the drone technology in their farms through grower support and outreach. Some of this outreach includes participating in local farm days and doing presentations in schools about bio controls in agriculture.
“There’s such a separation between farming and the general population, really trying to bridge that gap and talk about some of the things that we’re doing in the field, things that growers are doing,” Jaclyn said.
Chandler said that often, farmers want to use bio controls in their crops, but the newness of the technology and the lack of research prevents farmers from actually implementing the technology into their ag practices. This is where Jaclyn comes in — helping growers and pest control advisors build integrated pest management plans that can serve as another resource to farmers.
“The impact of using these bio controls is it’s another tool in the toolbox, ” Chandler said. “We’re consistently losing tools, and this is a tool that supplements some of those things we’re losing, so overall it should make our farming systems more resilient and hopefully weather the storm of lots of tools.”