George Heimpel is a little like a general who sent his troops
out to attack the enemy and is now awaiting news from the front.
The University of Minnesota entomologist is leading the war
against soybean aphids, a foreign invader that costs soybean
growers millions of dollars in treatment costs and lost yields.
His warriors: tiny parasitic wasps that kill soybean aphids. The
stingless wasp, Binodoxys communis, is an important natural
enemy of soybean aphids in their Asian homelands. When soybean
aphids arrived in the U.S. in 2000, their natural enemies —
which keep them in check back home — were left behind. So
Heimpel and other Midwest entomologists went to China and
brought back Binodoxys communis and several other strains of
wasps that attack soybean aphids. After four years of laboratory
safety testing at the University of Minnesota Insect Quarantine
Facility and two more years of federal and state permitting,
Binodoxys communis was approved for release last summer in seven
Midwestern states. Now, scientis