Using Ant Pheromones to Catch Crop Pests & Reduce Insecticide Spraying

 After reading this article I thought to myself, what if? What if we could actually stop the use of pesticides and start using targeted pheromones to attract species. They said that it's an unreliable way to get rid of insects because it's "volatile" and the effects don't last long.  But together the university of Bath and Sussex came together with chemists and chemical engineers and took this idea and made it better. They found that the release rate of the pheromones was a problem so they changed it so it would release for a long period. They created a framework that acts like a sponge where the pheromones are encapsulated in the pores and released over time. The proof of principle showed that the insects reacted normally towards the pheromones. They tried their theory on a eucalyptus plantation in Brazil with leaf-cutting ants. To make sure they got the right structure for the optimal outcome, they used computational modeling to simulate the pheromones, and finally they found that by alternating the chemical groups, they can change the speed at which the pheromones are released. Imagine a world where spraying pesticides on all plants was no more, creating a better environment and decreasing the harmful effects of pesticides

O'Neill, M. (2020, September 12). Using Ant Pheromones to Catch Crop Pests & Reduce Insecticide Spraying. SciTechDaily. https://scitechdaily.com/using-ant-pheromones-to-catch-crop-pests-reduce-insecticide-spraying/.