In ancient times on the mainland, the people were often threatened by locust plagues, and it is recorded in the Book of Poetry: "Go to its borers (moths are locusts), and its cockroaches, and do not harm my field." Tian Zu has a god, and he is in the fire. According to the statistics of the "History of China's Rescue of The Wasteland", the mainland was hit by a locust plague on average every 8.8 years during the Qin and Han dynasties, 3.5 years during the Two Song Dynasties, 1.6 years in the Yuan Dynasty, and 2.8 years in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.
Locust plagues are mainly caused by drought, so there is a saying that "there must be locust plagues after droughts", because when drought occurs, the soil will become more solid and the water content will be lower, which is the most suitable environment for locust breeding, and the water surface of rivers and lakes affected by drought will shrink, low-lying land will be exposed, and the place suitable for locusts to lay eggs will change more.
Since the mainland was often persecuted by locust plagues in ancient times, people also wanted to exterminate the locusts, and now the locust plagues on the mainland almost no longer appear, but they still often appear abroad. Then it is necessary to mention a man who solved the problem of the locust plague on the mainland, but few people know about it.
Ma Shijun is a Chinese ecologist who was a researcher at the Institute of Zoology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and an honorary director of the Center for Eco-Environmental Research.
In 1915, Ma Shijun landed in Yanzhou, Shandong Province, his father went through business, and then abandoned commercial farming, Ma Shijun was affected by this and was more interested in agriculture, at the age of 18 Ma Shijun was admitted to the Biology Department of the College of Agriculture of Peking University, after graduation Ma Shijun engaged in research related to agricultural pests in Shandong Province and Hubei Province.
In 1948, Ma Shijun went to the United States to study insect ecology, went to Utah State University to study insect ecology, and the following year Ma Shijun transferred to the University of Minnesota Research Institute to pursue a doctorate, and Ma Shijun also participated in the USDA's corn borer bioecology and control research.
After receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota, Ma Shijun first attended the 8th International Entomological Congress held in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and then returned to China, founding the country's first insect ecology laboratory in Beijing, and decided to completely eliminate the locust plague.
Ma Shijun led the research team to conduct field investigations, fixed-point observations, indoor experiments, etc., and found that the main reason for the outbreak of locusts was the occurrence of floods and droughts, and the secondary reasons were the instability and poverty and backwardness of the mainland society.
After clarifying the evolution law of the secondary types of locusts and the mechanism of their evolution, Ma Shijun proposed the locust control strategies and measures of "combining reform and treatment to eradicate locust pests". In addition, Ma Shijun has also proposed the theories and new concepts such as "Dynamic Analysis and Control Pathways of Agricultural Pests in China", "Space, Quantity, Time Structure and Dynamics of Insect Populations" and "Population Variable Growth".
It is the efforts of Ma Shijun's team that the locust plague on the mainland has been eradicated, and young people on the mainland have basically not seen the scene of the locust plague in person, so when they encounter a locust plague abroad, many people joke: "You can catch it and fry it and eat it." ”
As we all know, after the founding of New China, the mainland was in urgent need of talents, and the students also returned to China one by one from abroad to help the motherland build a homeland. During that period, the mainland was still very poor, but the Chinese people did it bitterly, developed the economy in a down-to-earth manner, and now the mainland has changed its appearance and become better and better, also because of the efforts of the mainland scientific researchers in the last century and the dedication of modern people.