New research from Virginia Tech and the USDA may have found a way to lure stink bugs from crops by imitating the chemical pheromone the bug creates when eating.
The brown marmorated stink bug first made its appearance about five years ago in Northern Virginia and started damaging apple crop and other produce, the Virginia Farm Bureau said in a release.
Part of a four-year project, the goal is to use genetic engineering to inject a protein into an expendable “trap crop” that would attract stink bugs away from more valuable food crops, the release said.
“This could create sort of like a protective barrier to your field,” said Jason Lancaster, a Virginia Tech biological sciences doctoral candidate and research assistant, in a release. “We know that once a stink bug lands on a host plant they like, they don’t move very far from it.”
Lancaster plans to identify the first of three proteins in a harlequin bug pheromone compound by the end of this summer, the release said. One challenge is that there are dozens of varieties of stink bugs, including harlequin bugs.
A common mustard plant has been tentatively identified as a test host for the research, according to Dr. Dorothea Tholl, associate professor of biological sciences at Virginia Tech’s College of Science.
“We believe if we can engineer these plants, that method will be more sustainable than pesticides that affect a wide range of insects," Tholl said in a release. "If the trap plants are attracting some stink bugs away, even a smaller amount, that’s preferred over spray applications that have to be repeated again and again.”
Source: newsleader.com
