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….
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
IUPAC Symposium 1A – Resistance Management: Insect Disease Vectors & Agricultural Pests Tuesday 2:30pm Hilary Ranson, The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine Pyrethroid insecticides are the front line weapon of choice against malaria-carrying mosquitos. These are the only class of insecticide that can be used to treat bednets and they are being used extensively for…
Paul Miller, Waterborne Environmental, Inc UK scientist Paul Miller will be presenting his work on modelling and thus minimising spray drift. His work with field trials, wind tunnels and simulations have shown that boom height and the droplet size distribution from the nozzles are the most important variables influencing drift risk with changes in boom…