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253

Sticky trick: new glue spray kills plant pests without chemicals (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

114 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (22 children)

97% of all insects are beneficials, meaning they are completely harmless or predate on the insects that eat your crops.

But sure, kill them all because bugs ewww.

Edit: Apparently this isn't so obvious to people. Ok, let me explain:

No pesticide can be precisely targeted. You will always capture or kill more insects that are beneficial than are not. In the article it mentions that the sticky spray doesn't capture bigger insects like bees. That's certainly progress over other types of physical traps, but not all insects are very big. Key beneficials like lady bugs, green lacewings, various spiders, pirate bugs, etc are very small. They will be trapped by this spray. If it traps a thrip, it will trap those bugs (and the study abstract says this - "small anthropods"). This isn't mentioned in the article but I can speak to this from personal experience farming. I've tried various options and the results are always the same - you may get rid of some thrips (and boy do I have thrips) but you also wipe out the insects that will eat the thrips and you end up in a kind of arms race. The more beneficials you kill the more pesticides you need.

[–] jack 1 points 7 months ago (5 children)

Thrips aren't beneficial.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (4 children)

Thrips aren’t beneficial.

Um. No kidding. Did you read the article? (Edit: that I linked to)

This year again, we released green lacewing larva in the Public Garden, the Boston Common, and Commonwealth Avenue Mall. As generalist predators, the tiny larvae (Chrysoperla rufilabris) provide a vital service by eating aphids, small caterpillars, beetles, thrips, mites, whiteflies, mealybugs, and even insect eggs.

Edit: My point, which seems to be completely lost on most people here is that no physical means of trapping insects is going to only target the problem insects. You will always capture more of the insects you didn't mean to harm. Source: me, having tried sticky traps and various oils in commercial farming settings.

[–] jack -1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Did you read the article?

I'm left wondering if you read it. It doesn't make the assertion you do:

no physical means of trapping insects is going to only target the problem insects

This seems self-evident, but I have to ask why you didn't cite a source that backs that up before slapping me with an "Um.No kidding."