{"id":1665,"date":"2021-03-17T10:12:20","date_gmt":"2021-03-17T10:12:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/horizon.peachpuff-wolverine-566518.hostingersite.com\/?p=1665"},"modified":"2021-03-17T10:12:20","modified_gmt":"2021-03-17T10:12:20","slug":"pheromones-mulch-and-wildflowers-how-to-control-pests-without-pesticides","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/horizon\/1665\/pheromones-mulch-and-wildflowers-how-to-control-pests-without-pesticides\/","title":{"rendered":"Pheromones, mulch and wildflowers \u2013 how to control pests without pesticides"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Pheromones that interfere with insect mating patterns, crops that are grown together with others and fields edged with wildflowers are just some of the techniques being developed by European scientists to defend crops from pests without resorting to pesticides, which have been\u00a0<\/strong>linked to widespread insect biodiversity loss<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Most crops require pesticides to grow profitably. But many pesticides are too efficient at killing insects, often indiscriminately. They aim to hit specific crop pests but spray deadly fire at friendly insects and some may harm pollinators such as bees.<\/p>\n

While the plight of bees attracts attention, other less visible insects are also in peril. Recent research found that\u00a040% of all insects are declining<\/a>, and a quarter could be wiped out within a decade.<\/p>\n

This is not inevitable. We can cut down on the use of many insecticides. To this end, scientists work on ways to protect crops from insect pests without wiping out beneficial insects which are often crucial to healthy ecosystems and provide sustenance to birds and other wildlife.<\/p>\n

One strategy is to disrupt the mating of insects by jamming their chemical signals. Insects such as moths waft pheromones into the air, which allows males to follow the perfumed path to a female. The concoctions are usually specific to a species of insect.<\/p>\n

By making the same pheromones as the insects and releasing them over crop fields, it is possible to confuse the insects by hiding their pheromone trails and making it difficult for them to pair up. This technique is called mating disruption.<\/p>\n

The synthetic pheromones must be the same as those made by the insects, and unfortunately manufacturing them chemically is costly. As a result, mating disruption is mostly for high value fruits and vegetables, such as tomatoes, apples and pears.<\/p>\n

But now a European project called\u00a0Olefine<\/a>\u00a0has developed a way to manufacture pheromones using\u00a0yeast fermentation<\/a>, making them a more affordable alternative to pesticides. This is done by introducing genes for insect enzymes into yeast.<\/p>\n

\u2018We started with a lab process and then improved and optimised it,\u2019 said Professor Irina Borodina at the Technical University of Denmark and founder of the company\u00a0BioPhero<\/a>. A yeast from cheese fermentation generated less than a milligram of pheromone per litre in a lab at the start of the project, but by the end was making grams per litre. \u2018There are lots of magic tricks we can do to make the cell cooperate with us,\u2019 said Prof. Borodina.<\/p>\n

\u2018People, particularly younger people, care a lot about the environment and are concerned about contamination of groundwater by persistent insecticides.\u2019<\/p>\n

Prof. Irina Borodina, Founder, BioPhero<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Fermentation<\/strong><\/p>\n

BioPhero is now working with several companies in Olefine and a project called\u00a0PHERA<\/a>\u00a0in order to scale up the production of starter ingredients and turn them into cost-effective pheromone products that can be sprayed on commodity crops such as maize, soya bean, cotton and rice.<\/p>\n

\u2018There are two main limitations on the use of pheromones at a large scale,\u2019 said Prof. Borodina. \u2018One is price.\u2019 Pheromone price needs to fall significantly for mating disruption to be widely adopted for row crops. \u2018We can solve this by manufacturing pheromones using fermentation,\u2019 said Prof. Borodina.<\/p>\n

The other challenge is how to formulate and dispense them. Currently, pheromones are dispersed through plastic hangars \u2013 more suitable for greenhouses than large crop fields. BioPhero is working with other companies that are expert in formulating pheromones for slow release in crop fields.<\/p>\n

\u2018(PHERA partners) are formulating pheromones in sprayable formulations and trying them out in the field, in real conditions for mating disruption,\u2019 Prof Borodina explained.<\/p>\n

One pheromone will be useful to\u00a0interfere with cotton ball worms<\/a>\u00a0(Helicoverpa zea)<\/em>\u00a0on cotton and soybean, and the diamondback moth (Plutella xylostella)\u00a0<\/em>on cabbages.\u00a0<\/em>The pheromone looked promising when sprayed\u00a0onto cotton fields in Greece<\/a>. A\u00a0second pheromone<\/a>\u00a0will target fall armyworms (Spodoptera frugiperda)<\/em>, voracious crop eaters that spread from South America to Africa and Asia and consume grain crops, including maize.<\/p>\n

Use of pheromones offers an environmentally friendly way to control specific insects, because \u2018it doesn\u2019t harm other insects, it doesn\u2019t harm biodiversity,\u2019 noted Prof Borodina. This supports\u00a0the EU\u2019s Farm to Fork strategy<\/a>, which aims for a 50% pesticide reduction and 25% increase in organic farmland by 2030, she added.<\/p>\n

The pheromones are also non-toxic, and they evaporate quickly. They are made from fatty acids, and so are also rapidly eaten by microbes. Unlike many pesticides, they therefore do not persist in the environment.<\/p>\n

Integrated<\/strong><\/p>\n

However, pheromones are not the only greener route to protect crops while cutting down on agrichemicals. Integrated pest management is a strategy that uses various control techniques to push levels of the pest down to acceptable levels. Pheromones can be part of this strategy.<\/p>\n

In Germany, Dr Severin Hatt in the\u00a0agroecology and organic farming group<\/a>\u00a0at the University of Bonn is sowing crops without agrichemicals in ways that he hopes will supress diseases, insect pests and weeds, as part of a project called\u00a0WIDE-synergies<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He planted seeds at\u00a0the experimental farming station outside Bonn<\/a>\u00a0to grow different combinations of winter wheat and winter broad beans. There are 32 strips of crop, each measuring 25 metres long and 9 metres wide, in eight different planting regimes. The idea is to compare the effect of techniques such as intercropping, living mulch and wildflowers with strips consisting of wheat or broad bean.<\/p>\n

Pests and disease often are specific to one crop. Planting this one crop in a field makes it easy for a pest or disease to spread from one plant to the next, which is why agrichemicals are often so necessary in monocultures. Mixing two crops such as wheat and broad beans together \u2013 called intercropping \u2013 makes it less straightforward for a disease or pest to spread from plant to plant.<\/p>\n

Another strategy is to sow a living mulch amongst wheat. \u2018These are grasses and legumes that cover the soil,\u2019 explained Dr Hatt. \u2018It is an ecologically friendly way to reduce weeds.\u2019 The living mulch will not compete against the crop but against weeds that try to grow there.<\/p>\n

Dr Hatt will also plant wildflowers beside some crop strips to see if this encourages beneficial insects, in the hope that they will transfer to nearby crops. The wildflower strips will consist of a mix of a dozen flowers that will attract beneficial insects, including predators of crop pests such as aphids. \u2018We will then monitor the predators of aphids, particularly ladybirds, hoverflies and lacewings, and some parasitic wasps,\u2019 said Dr Hatt. He will check regularly to see how many aphids are in a crop strip and if there are more natural enemies of these pests in some situations than in others.<\/p>\n

What is unusual about this experiment is that it will try intercropping and wildflower margins alone and together, to see if together they produce synergies. It will also look at more than just insect pests. \u2018Most research has focused on insects or disease or weeds, for intercropping or flower margins,\u2019 said Dr Hatt. \u2018Here we want to consider them all together.\u2019<\/p>\n

Insecticides will not be used on the crop strips. None of the strategies risk killing beneficial insects, or risk insecticide residues being left on the crops or getting flushed into groundwater. This is something that is viewed as increasingly important.<\/p>\n

\u2018Consumers are becoming more aware of the dangers (of pesticides) for their health,\u2019 said Prof. Borodina. \u2018And people, particularly younger people, care a lot about the environment and are concerned about contamination of groundwater by persistent insecticides.\u2019<\/p>\n

The need to protect biodiversity is also increasingly a priority. The pheromone strategy does not kill insects but keeps pests at levels in a field where they do not cause economic harm to growers. \u2018People are becoming more aware of environmental health issues,\u2019 said Prof. Borodina.<\/p>\n

The research in this article was funded by the EU.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Originally published on Horizon Magazine<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pheromones that interfere with insect mating patterns, crops that are grown together with others and fields edged with wildflowers are just some of the techniques being developed by European scientists to defend crops from pests without resorting to pesticides, which have been\u00a0linked to widespread insect biodiversity loss. Most crops require pesticides to grow profitably. But … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":320,"featured_media":1666,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[234,368,396],"class_list":["post-1665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-earth-energy-environment","tag-biodiversity","tag-insects","tag-pesticides"],"yoast_head":"\nPheromones, mulch and wildflowers \u2013 how to control pests without pesticides - Horizon Magazine Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/horizon\/1665\/pheromones-mulch-and-wildflowers-how-to-control-pests-without-pesticides\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Pheromones, mulch and wildflowers \u2013 how to control pests without pesticides\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Pheromones that interfere with insect mating patterns, crops that are grown together with others and fields edged with wildflowers are just some of the techniques being developed by European scientists to defend crops from pests without resorting to pesticides, which have been\u00a0linked to widespread insect biodiversity loss. 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Scientists are searching for biological replacements for chemical pesticides to improve crop and human health. \u00a0 The threat to agriculture from invasive species is huge. The United Nations (UN) estimates that plant disease costs the world\u2019s\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/scienceblog.com\/horizon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2022\/05\/fabio_michele_cape.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/scienceblog.com\/horizon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2022\/05\/fabio_michele_cape.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/scienceblog.com\/horizon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2022\/05\/fabio_michele_cape.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/scienceblog.com\/horizon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2022\/05\/fabio_michele_cape.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/scienceblog.com\/horizon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2022\/05\/fabio_michele_cape.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1655,"url":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/horizon\/1655\/what-urban-nature-really-means-for-insect-biodiversity\/","url_meta":{"origin":1665,"position":2},"title":"What urban nature really means for insect biodiversity","author":"Sandrine Ceurstemont","date":"March 8, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Parks and green spaces in cities provide health and wellness benefits to human inhabitants, but they\u2019re not necessarily beneficial for other urban dwellers \u2013 like insects. 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It\u2019s part of a field of work looking at insect neurology which is helping to unravel the complexity of their brains.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Earth, Energy & Environment"","block_context":{"text":"Earth, Energy & Environment","link":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/horizon\/category\/earth-energy-environment\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Understanding the way bees and ants communicate might make it easier to protect them in the future.","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/scienceblog.com\/horizon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2018\/06\/Honey_bee_portrait_crp.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/scienceblog.com\/horizon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2018\/06\/Honey_bee_portrait_crp.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/scienceblog.com\/horizon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2018\/06\/Honey_bee_portrait_crp.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/scienceblog.com\/horizon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2018\/06\/Honey_bee_portrait_crp.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/scienceblog.com\/horizon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2018\/06\/Honey_bee_portrait_crp.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1260,"url":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/horizon\/1260\/the-robots-weeding-organic-farms-and-patrolling-for-greenhouse-pests\/","url_meta":{"origin":1665,"position":5},"title":"The robots weeding organic farms and patrolling for greenhouse pests","author":"Anthony King","date":"April 27, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Robots that use artificial intelligence to recognise the health of fruit and vegetable crops and when they\u2019re ready to harvest are being trialled to help small, organic and greenhouse farmers with weeding and patrolling for pests. 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