{"id":5490,"date":"2015-11-01T15:15:41","date_gmt":"2015-11-01T04:15:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ppmmagazine.com.au\/?p=5490"},"modified":"2024-03-18T12:38:09","modified_gmt":"2024-03-18T01:38:09","slug":"the-history-of-termite-baiting-in-australia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/professionalpestmanager.com\/nz\/termite-treatment\/termite-baits\/the-history-of-termite-baiting-in-australia\/","title":{"rendered":"THE HISTORY OF TERMITE BAITING IN AUSTRALIA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr Don Ewart<\/strong> takes a look at the history of termite baiting in Australia.\u00a0<\/em>
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There is an ever-increasing range of modern termite baits on the market. However, unless you have been around the industry a long time (a very long time!), you probably won\u2019t know the history of bait development in Australia.<\/p>\n

A bit of history<\/h2>\n

Putting out food to trap termites has been used as a technique for a long time. There is evidence of it being used in China many centuries back. More recently CSIRO had considered it at least as far back as the 1960s. With a bit of luck, the upcoming Howick and Staunton \u2018history\u2019 book will flesh this out for us.<\/p>\n

I began baiting termites in 1979, but back then it was purely for ecological studies. Even back then, baiting appeared to have been considered a combination of part science, part art \u2013 some walkers stumbling upon my grids of wrapped toilet paper rolls assumed they were meant to be a desert landscape sculpture!<\/p>\n

It was only through the 1980s, when working with Dr John French<\/strong>, we developed systems to bait termites in their mounds.<\/p>\n

In the early 1990s this lead to the CSIRO bait box technique, a process where termites were aggregated, separated, dusted with arsenic and then allowed to return home. Although CSIRO no longer do termite work, you can still read about it on my website (drdons.net<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Tom Boschma<\/strong> of Specialist Termite Control was instrumental in the system development, doing the first commercial\u00a0bait jobs. In 1995, Dr French ran a series of termite baiting workshops around Australia and baiting became mainstream.<\/p>\n

However, Australian ideas on termite baiting took a back seat as commercial baiting systems arrived from the United States, based on hexaflumuron. Sentricon from Dow was the first commercial baiting product to hit the market in Australia. The Dow baits were developed by Prof Nan-Yao Su<\/strong>, and largely based on the termite trapping methods of Professor Minoru Tamashiro<\/strong> used at the University of Hawaii. These American baits were all much smaller than those being used in Australia.<\/p>\n

The first Exterra work was done by David Pearson’s PCT International who, under advice, worked on a different active, the now familiar chlorfluazuron and slightly larger baits. Exterra moved their bait and Steve Broadbent<\/strong> away from PCT to begin their fast-growing Australian business.\u00a0 PCT responded quickly with their essentially similar bait, named Nemesis and further developed with Kevin Girard<\/strong>. Now we also have TermatriX, Xterm, Agenda and more.<\/p>\n

Lessons learned<\/h2>\n

Our early baits were wooden boxes filled with corrugated cardboard and wood strips. We knew from CSIRO laboratory work that the preferred timbers were kiln dried and cut from the Ash trees, Eucalyptus regnans<\/em> and Eucalyptus delegatensis<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The research with bait boxes brought in other developments including:<\/p>\n