{"id":7972,"date":"2018-02-26T10:38:41","date_gmt":"2018-02-26T10:38:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sustainableagriculturewaitrose.org\/?p=7972"},"modified":"2018-02-26T10:38:41","modified_gmt":"2018-02-26T10:38:41","slug":"a-sunscreen-for-biopesticides","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/sustainable-agriculture\/2018\/02\/26\/a-sunscreen-for-biopesticides\/","title":{"rendered":"A sunscreen for biopesticides"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\"\"Scientists have taken a step forward in their efforts to tackle serious crop pests by reducing the sensitivity of biopesticides to sunlight<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Insect pests consume around a third of all the crops we grow, sometimes threatening food security. The main way of controlling these pests is by spraying chemical pesticides but these can be damaging to the environment and so safer alternatives are urgently required including more effective biological pesticides.<\/p>\n

Professor Ken Wilson<\/a>\u00a0of the Lancaster Environment Centre<\/a> at Lancaster University<\/a> and Principal Scientist David Grzywacz<\/a> of the Natural Resources Institute<\/a> at the University of Greenwich<\/a>, both experts in the field of insect viruses, have been working with the lean formulations company,\u00a0Exosect Ltd<\/a>, on a two-year biopesticide formulation programme.<\/p>\n

The programme was funded by the UK\u2019s Agritech Catalyst fund, administered by Innovate UK<\/a>, the UK\u2019s innovation agency, and co-funded by the UK\u2019s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Exosect Ltd has this month (February) announced \u2018excellent results\u2019 from this virus formulation programme and have formally begun licensing discussions.<\/p>\n

The team developed a sprayable formulation technology based on Exosect\u2019s proprietary formulation platform, Entostat\u00ae, which dramatically improves the performance of baculovirus biopesticides for the control of insect crop pests.<\/p>\n

Initial development showed that the virus suffered no impairment through the novel formulation process. The formulation protected the virus throughout its journey to the insect gut where the Entostat was successfully broken down by the high pH, releasing the virus. They also tested its ability to withstand sunlight (UV).<\/p>\n

Common to all viruses, baculoviruses are highly sensitive to ultraviolet (UV) radiation. Once applied to a crop, UV degradation can reduce efficacy significantly within 4 to 24 hours of application in full temperate sunlight.\u00a0 Repeated applications are often required in order to control multiple generations of insect pests. Both of the aforementioned factors can increase costs to the grower significantly.<\/p>\n

The team set out to improve the commercial viability of virus use in crop protection by developing a formulation that would increase the persistence of the virus on the crop by improving its UV stability \u2013 in other words, they produced a sunscreen for the virus.<\/p>\n

Results showed that the new Entostat formulation enabled a fifty percent reduction in the amount of virus required to match the treated control. It also greatly increased the longevity of the virus when exposed to UV radiation which will enable growers to significantly extend application intervals.<\/p>\n

Professor Ken Wilson said: \u201cDeveloping robust virus formulations is currently a key area of interest for the crop protection and life sciences sectors as the potential for beneficial uses grows. Together, we have developed a technology that could solve one of the long-recognised issues associated with biological pesticides \u2013 their sensitivity to sunlight. This could be a particularly valuable tool for controlling insect pests in the tropics, where UV levels are at their highest.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scientists have taken a step forward in their efforts to tackle serious crop pests by reducing the sensitivity of biopesticides to sunlight Insect pests consume around a third of all the crops we grow, sometimes threatening food security. The main way of controlling these pests is by spraying chemical pesticides but these can be damaging […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":381,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[129,284,397,425,589,679,865,933],"class_list":["post-7972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-press-release","tag-biopesticides","tag-crop-protection","tag-entostat","tag-exosect","tag-insects","tag-lancaster-university","tag-pests","tag-professor-keith-wilson"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/sustainable-agriculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/sustainable-agriculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/sustainable-agriculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/sustainable-agriculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/381"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/sustainable-agriculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/sustainable-agriculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7972\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/sustainable-agriculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/sustainable-agriculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/sustainable-agriculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}