Simple Measures That Aided In Controlling The Giant African Snail

The giant African snail is a highly invasive pest and is considered globally as one of the top 100 pest species with the greatest invasion potential. In October 2008 this pest was discovered in an area of my home country called Diego Martin in Trinidad and Tobago and by November 2017 it was reported to have infested 18 new areas where agricultural crop production is prominent.

This snail is a big problem because it consumes over 500 crop species and is a threat to human health by having the potential to spread the rat lungworm which is linked to meningitis in humans. Eventually, a granular form Metaldehyde was recommended to eradicate this pest but it only worked in close proximity and is detrimental to human health being within contact with the crop.

The population of snails was rising rapidly due to several natural factors such as the rainy season which provides required proliferating conditions and the ability of each snail to have both testes and ovaries and is capable of producing both semen and ova. The increase in devastation got to a point where farmers were abandoning their farming land which they had occupied for years.

In 2018 a former professor and I planned to incorporate food-grade essence with the metaldehyde to work as an attractant since snails are powered by their sense of smell and it was better to lure them away from the vegetation into a kill zone. Food grade essence was added to Liquid metaldehyde at a one to one ratio to cotton pads and placed in petri dishes in the heart of the infested area and left for a 12 hour period. We placed the raw metaldehyde as the control and the food-grade essence as the treatment. When we arrived at the field there were many dead snails gathered around the petri dishes. After testing, many farmers and pest control agencies started using the control with the attractants. Currently, these snails are just pain of the past.

It was unknown if metaldehyde contained attractive properties but after the field experiment, if any mode of attraction was present, it was clearly amplified by using food grade essence. The metaldehyde treatment is now available with other attractants such as molasses.

Fun fact – Giant African snails are Omnivores, they love to eat other snails and banana is a favorite.