More than 30,000 East African farmers are using plants to protect their corn (maize) crops from insect and weed attack. The crop protection strategy was developed by Kenyan and UK scientists.
Termed “Push-Pull’, it relies on strategically deploying attractive and repellent plants in alternating rows to control the growth of African witchweed and stemborer insects. These are the biggest threat to cereal crops in Sub-Saharan Africa. Stem borers often destroy 80% of a crop.
IUPAC Symposium 6B – Crop Biofactories: Plants as Sustainable Bio-Production Systems for Industrial Raw Materials, Wednesday 3:30pm
Sten Stymne, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Vegetable oil is the agricultural product that chemically most resembles fossil oils and has therefore great potential to replace it, says Sweden’s Sten Stymne.
He’s part of an 11-million-Euro global project to engineer seed oils for bio-lubricant uses.
IUPAC Symposium 4A – Natural Products, Tuesday 1:45PM – 3:00PM
Leslie Weston, Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga
Leslie Weston has discovered and patented two weedkillers made by plants. Now she’s investigating Patterson’s curse to see what tricks it uses to invade grasslands and repel herbivores. Her vision is to use plants or plant extracts to control plants, as an alternative to synthetic pesticides and herbicides.
RACI Symposium – Cereals & Disease Prevention, Tuesday 4:30pm
Paul MacLean, University of Colorado
Resistant starch could transform our breakfasts, our gut health and help us lose weight.
Paul MacLean has shown that replacing simple sugars and digestible starch with starch that is resistant to digestion in the small intestine can have big consequences.
IUPAC Symposium 1A – Formulation: Efficacy and the Environment
Ingo Fleute-Schlachter, Cognis, Germany
Friendlier pesticides are on the way. Every pesticide contains an active ingredient. But there is more in the can. The formulation may need additives and adjuvants which boost performance: working as emuslifiers, wetters, dispersants, or sticking agents to deliver the pesticide to where it’s needed – the surfaces of leaves for example.
IUPAC Symposium 3B – Changing Pesticide use and Risk Scenarios with the Introduction of GM Crops Monday 3:30pm
Gary Fitt, CSIRO Entomology
GM cotton was released in 1996, as part of the fight back against Helicoverpa – arguably the most destructive agricultural pest in the world. Bollgard II varieties now make up 90% of the Australian cotton industry. What difference have they made?
Gary Fitt from CSIRO Entomology in Queensland will report that farmers have reduced pesticide use by up to 90% providing on-farm benefits and greatly reducing environmental disruption.
IUPAC Symposium 4B – Natural Products, Tuesday 4pm
John Pickett, Rothamsted Research
John Pickett and his British colleagues are creating new kinds of perfumes or attractants for pest insects.
They’re employing farnesyl diphosphate—the ‘parent’ molecule that insects use as the starting point for many chemical signals such as sex pheromones—to create new, more powerful attractants that will be cheaper and easier to make.
IUPAC Symposium 4B – Formulation, Efficacy and the Environment
Monday 4:30pm
Heping Zhu, United States Department of Agriculture
“Current label-recommended levels of pesticides for spray application technology, pest pressure and crop growth structure are vague, frequently resulting in excessive use of pesticide,” says Heping Zhu from the USDA in Ohio.
David Leach, Southern Cross University
A wood extract has been registered as the first natural termiticide in Australia by the Australian Pesticide and Veterinary Medicines Administration.
David Leach and his colleagues from Southern Cross University and the University of Western Sydney identified the active extract in Eremophila mitchellii also known as budda, false sandalwood.
The achievement illustrates the potential to learn new tricks from Australia’s native plants and animals.
IUPAC Symposium 3A – Chemical Ecology and Crop Protection, Thursday 9:30am
Peter Gregg, Cotton CRC
A plant perfume that attracts female moths—a world-first attractant invented by the Cotton Catchment Communities CRC and its partner Ag Biotech Australia—is already reducing pesticide use by Queensland and NSW cotton growers.
Peter Gregg and his colleagues have developed a ‘moth magnet’ that attracts Helicoverpa, the cotton boll worm moth which causes billions of dollars of damage to agriculture world-wide.
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