Edible oil droplets trap bugs without the harm to people and wildlife that synthetic pesticides can cause

The insect glue, produced from edible oils, was inspired by plants such as sundews that use the strategy to capture their prey. A key advantage of physical pesticides over toxic pesticides is that pests are highly unlikely to evolve resistance, as this would require them to develop much larger and stronger bodies, while bigger beneficial insects, like bees, are not trapped by the drops.

The drops were tested on the western flower thrip, which are known to attack more than 500 species of vegetable, fruit and ornamental crops. More than 60% of the thrips were captured within the two days of the test, and the drops remained sticky for weeks.

Work on the sticky pesticide is continuing, but Dr Thomas Kodger at Wageningen University & Research, in the Netherlands, who is part of the self defence project doing the work, said: “We hope it will have not nearly as disastrous side-effects on the local environment or on accidental poisonings of humans. And the alternatives are much worse, which are potential starvation due to crop loss or the overuse of chemical pesticides, which are a known hazard.”

Link to the study

  • Kichae@lemmy.caEnglish
    8·
    6 months ago

    I’ve watched chunks of society freak out over everything from basic food ingredients to vaccines because they contained polysyllabic words that people decried as “chemicals”.

    And I’ve spent my whole damn life listening to people abuse the word “theory” until the the Christofascists and neo-nazis managed to become mainstream.

    People abuse technical words with a purpose. Don’t play apologetics for them because you believe their understanding of words is more nuanced than they are.