Mark Porter, left, and Jordan Donaghy of the Oregon Department of Agriculture release whitetop gall mites in a patch of the noxious weed in Baker County in June 2026. The choice of Baker County as the state’s initial testing ground for this form of “biocontrol” of whitetop was no coincidence. Instead, researchers pluck whitetop plants that have galls, and distribute those plants among healthy whitetop, in effect transplanting the mites to a new food source. Littlefield wrote in his article detailing results from the Montana releases that whitetop plants with galls produced fewer seeds than other plants, and were also shorter. Other biocontrol optionsThe whitetop mites are the newest, but not the only, forms of biocontrol for noxious weeds.