We will build on prior USDA sbir projects to continue monitoring and surveillance research on cattle fever ticks, and to embrace asian longhorned ticks and brown DOG ticks

Key project components will be our novel pre-commercial tick trap and expertise in tick surveillance and management embodied in banfieldbio personnel and collaborators at texas a & m university, rutgers university and centro DE biotecnolog & iacute; a GEN & oacute; mica, instituto polit & eacute; cnico nacional, mexico. In companion research we will build a tick identification APP and a novel tick collection container for secure chain-of-custody shipping and genetic testing of specimens. Our proposed research on developing traps and lures for the three target species, and using them to develop novel surveillance methodology, will feed into an integrated system that will provide agricultural stakeholders with a low-cost, comprehensive and proven tick surveillance system which surpasses currently available tools and methods. The system will require less labor to capture more specimens, more species, and more life stages of ticks. We predict that the increased functional and statistical power of the method will foster detection of invasive pests at low population densities, increase the visibility of minor species and enable identification of tick-borne diseases at low levels in populations. We anticipate a paradigm shift in the USDA's role in mitigating ticks and tick-borne diseases, which meets USDA program goals. Specifically, this project supports the USDA strategy objective 4.4 for infectious diseases and pests: implement systems approaches that inform infectious disease-related agricultural science and improving surveillance, early detection and rapid response...