Rio Grande Valley citrus farms are facing an invasion of disease-carrying pests called Asian citrus psyllids.

The insect -- which carries citrus greening, a plague that struck Florida orange groves in 2005 -- is among a dozen psyllid species found in Texas, which has a $200 million citrus industry.

So the U.S. Department of Agriculture research station in Weslaco, Texas, has been leading the search for a biological control. USDA scientists have experimented with a small wasp that preys on psyllids and with essential oils to lure the insect to its demise.

But the pest-control research is in danger. USDA is planning to close the Texas research station and nine others across the country in response to Congress' slashing $40 million from the department's research service late last year. The stations are among 259 USDA offices and facilities scheduled to close this year.

"The general thing you hear out of folks in Washington is they're going to do their best," said Ray Prewett, president of Texas Citrus Mutual, a trade group. "We don't think that's very likely to happen, and we just don't think a lot of this work could be done someplace else."

With almost 100 scientists and staffers, Weslaco's Kika de la Garza Subtropical Agricultural Center is the largest of the 10 Agriculture Research Service facilities scheduled to close. USDA would not allow scientists at Weslaco or other stations to speak to reporters.

The Lower Rio Grande Valley station is the country's first line of defense against insects crossing the Mexican border. USDA scientists there have quarantined products and collaborated with Mexican researchers on fruit flies, boll weevils and other exotic pests.

Moreover, Weslaco is the focal point of efforts to control carrizo cane, a giant invasive weed along the border. The weed creates headaches for the Border Patrol by offering cover along riverbanks to smugglers and illegal immigrants; it also soaks up enormous amounts of precious water in the drought-ridden state.

Weslaco is also among a few USDA research stations studying the mysterious decline of honeybees. The decline known as colony collapse disorder, threatens crops that depend on bees for pollination.

After the research stations close, there will still be 90 Agricultural Research Service facilities left. Spokeswoman Sandy Miller Hays said there will be efforts to transfer research from shuttered stations to other locations.

But a move may not be possible for the Weslaco research, she said, a concern echoed by citrus farmers.

"It's easy to say there's going to be some effort to continue it," Prewett said. "There are a couple of real problems with the reality of the situation. The subtropical climate here is the only place where you can do some of this research."

There are similar concerns being aired at other soon-to-close research stations.

Alaska seafood, Ohio watershed

Alaska's Agricultural Research Service station is also facing closure, as USDA plans to shutter a new $1.2 million greenhouse in Fairbanks and end regional seafood research.

For the past 12 years, USDA scientists in Alaska have been researching uses for fish parts that are cast aside in the production of fillets. Fish-processing plants generate 1.5 million metric tons of this waste from the 2 million metric tons of fish that are harvested in Alaska each year, according to Scott Smiley, a University of Alaska, Fairbanks, professor who has worked with ARS on its fisheries research.

Recently, ARS scientists in Alaska developed a method to freeze-dry salmon muscle that makes it more desirable as food for people.

"Sometimes when the salmon gets too close to spawning season, the roe is of high quality and value, but the muscle quality has deteriorated and often has limited uses," USDA food technologist Peter Bechtel said in an issue of USDA's Agricultural Research magazine last August. "A freeze-dried product would be a way to use the edible portions of meat and add value."

Scientists have also been exploring ways to convert fish waste into animal feed, bone meal and oils.

While some foreign institutions study fish-waste uses, the Agricultural Research Service has been the only major source of this research in the United States, Smiley said.

The University of Alaska could continue the research, he said, "provided there was a source of federal funding."

But federal cash is hard to come by, and universities are barely scraping by, meaning it is unlikely they will carry on the research at the same level as the ARS stations.

For example, Steven Slack, director of Ohio State University's Agricultural Research and Development Center, said there would be no chance the university could take over research being done at USDA's Coshocton, Ohio, research station.

Since the 1930s, ARS at Coshocton has managed a large experimental watershed and monitored rainfall, nutrients, temperatures, growing days and other data. The information has been used to assess the environmental impacts of conservation practices.

The station has also recently been studying the effects of climate change on Midwest corn production. Both that, and the historical record gleaned from the watershed work, will end when ARS closes its station there.

There is no substitute for data that has been collected at Coshocton, Slack said. "It's not an inexpensive proposition to manage a large-scale facility like that," he said.

No surprise

Although Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack just officially announced the closings this month, the Agricultural Research Service has known for about a year that it faced some difficult choices, Miller Hays said. The service is already working on finding other jobs for employees at centers facing closure, she said.

The handwriting was on the wall last February, when President Obama unveiled a budget proposal that would have cut $39 million from ARS. At that time, the service began reviewing all its properties and chose 10 locations using criteria that included whether centers have a "critical mass" of scientists, whether research could be transferred to another facility and whether the building itself needed repairs.

But Prewett said the stations' days were limited when "earmarks" became a bad word on Capitol Hill. A $1.7 million earmark for honey bee research at Kika de la Garza, for example, made Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) list of the top 10 "porkiest" projects in the 2009 omnibus spending bill.

With the elimination of earmarks, Prewett said, lawmakers cannot throw a lifeline to research centers in their districts.

In some cases at the closing centers, research has come to a "natural conclusion," Miller Hays said.

Such is the case in Louisiana, she added, where ARS scientists have searched since 1989 for ways to eradicate the Formosan subterranean termite, a tormenter of homeowners across the Gulf Coast.

"We achieved what we set out to achieve," Miller Hays said. "We had a particular research mission, and we have in fact mostly achieved that. Maybe not completely to the absolute end, but we felt like we achieved that."

But to researchers and property owners partnering in the ARS termite project in New Orleans, the research is hardly close to being completed, and USDA's closure will leave a gap that its partner, Louisiana State University, cannot fill.

USDA will not only withdraw its scientists from New Orleans but will also stop funding treatment programs for homes and trees in the French Quarter. ARS scientists had been partnering with LSU researchers, pest management professionals and property owners in a pilot program that treated about 80 blocks in the French Quarter.

The treatment was meant to help not only homeowners but also trees. The Formosan subterranean termite eats through tree trunks until the entire tree falls over. Up to 30 percent of the trees in the New Orleans region are infested, according to Dennis Ring, an extension entomologist at LSU's Ag Center.

The treatment program, which was run on between $1 million and $1.5 million a year, is now wrapping up, as researchers spend the rest of a grant that expires Aug. 31.

LSU won't be able to fund the salaries of the 12 or so USDA scientists, Ring said.

"What will happen in the French Quarter if property owners stop treating? If they stop, then the Formosans will simply come back and just build their numbers," Ring said.

"I suggest that $1.5 million a year is not the problem with the federal budget," he added. "It is totally insignificant. The budget is something like $3.7 trillion. You're not going to do anything for balancing the budget by stopping this program."

More ARS closures

The following is a list of other ARS closings:

• The Western Integrated Cropping Systems Research Unit in Shafter, Calif., has been a center of cotton research since the 1920s. Scientists there developed the Acala variety of cotton and have most recently been searching for a control for a deadly cotton disease, Fusarium Race 4.

• The Beef Cattle Research facility in Brooksville, Fla., has worked on cross-breeding Angus, Brahman and Romosinuano cattle and discovered a gene that keeps cattle cool in subtropical temperatures.

• The Southern Piedmont Conservation Research Center in Watkinsville, Ga., has been a center for studying soil erosion and pollution that washes into waterways off farmland since the 1930s.

• The Genetics and Production Research Unit in Lane, Okla., has focused on organics and other alternative crops. Its scientists also studied pest management in vegetable farms in the Southern Plains.

• The Cotton Quality Research Station at Clemson, S.C., specialized on improving cotton farming.

• The Appalachian Farming Systems Research Center in Beaver, W.Va., has been studying the diversification of farming and livestock raising in Appalachia.