Microwave HERF Emitter for Locust Pest Control

The locust is one of the most devastating pests in agriculture. Locust swarms can fly hundreds of kilometers between different production areas and move rapidly from one country or region to another. For over 65 years, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations has assisted countries at risk in winning the battle against locust plagues, generating various control strategies, among which chemical control stands out as one of the fastest methods for exterminating the pest, but highly detrimental to humans. However, the chemical methods produce affectations on human health as a result of a not handled properly product at the moment of being applied. In some occasions dealing with chemical methods also results in negative repercussions for cultivation since they receive directly chemical products and then they are sold to the wholesale market without any process of cleaning. The lack of control of locust pest result in a wide affectations on humans and crops which produce a huge economic loss. In this context, in this paper, a pest control alternative is proposed through the use of a High-Energy Radio Frequency (HERF) microwave emitter device. The device has the ability to generate microwave waves which are effective in eradicating the locust after a certain time exposition. The locust physiology reacts against the microwave's ability to alter water molecules at high frequencies. The results show that the proposed solution is capable of dealing with locust pests without crop affectation.