A MEASLY 5 per cent cut in mice and rat damage to cereal crops could make a huge difference to world hunger.
Research has predicted even a small decrease in rodent damage to cereals could feed a third of all the world's undernourished population.
It is these stark facts that have led to a team of UK researchers picking up a grant of almost $10 million to study the scent trails of mice and rats.
And it is hoped the work could mean less or even no use of chemical mouse control measures in the future.
University of Liverpool researcher Jane Hurst said their work would help understand the complexity of mammalian scents and what they meant, with the hope of changing the way rodents behave.
"Rats and mice reproduce very rapidly and prove difficult to track, particularly as they learn quickly how to evade current control strategies."
Invasive Animals CRC commercialisation manager Dr Simon Humphrys said the research had some limited relevance to Australian conditions.
"Their work is more applicable to situations such as grain storage and shedding, rather than in crops," he said.
"It wouldn't be something which could be used in plague situations."
Dr Humphrys said the UK research work would manipulate hormones, such as those produced by sexually mature mice, to modify behaviour.
"It would work in smaller areas but I can't see that these scents could be powerful enough to overcome other driving factors to breed, like the amount of feed available."
Dr Humphrys said Australia, one of the few countries in the world to suffer large mice plagues, would always need a fall-back that could produce a fast knockdown of numbers.
"It's been shown that you can control the behaviour of other animals like carp through pheremones, and this research could be used in Australia, but around sheds and grain storages, not paddocks," he said.
