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

  • enbyecho@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10·
    6 months ago

    We can have less efficient agriculture that doesn’t require indiscriminate killing of species.

    Thank you!

    One of the big lies of modern industrialized agriculture is that we have a production problem. We don’t! We have a “profit problem” in the sense that industrialized food producers demand ever greater profits which means they have to continually find ways to get people to eat more “value”, in volume and/or value-added processes.

    In reality we have a distribution problem that is caused by industrialization and centralization. The real solution is decentralization and diversification.

    • whoreticulture@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      6 months ago

      🫰🏻🫰🏻Yes! We don’t need to all eat the same things everywhere. I don’t need avocados shipped in from Chile. Local foods is a great way to increase efficiency as well, there is less loss from transportation. But it does mean that you can’t eat the same things everywhere you go. If we want to live in a sustainable way, there are big policy changes that need to happen, but those policy changes would lead to changes in our everyday lifestyle. The party’s over, we see the results happening right before our eyes and being able to eat the same McDonald’s cheeseburger in every country is not worth the cost of mass extinction.