253
Sticky trick: new glue spray kills plant pests without chemicals (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 7 months ago by girlfreddy@lemmy.ca to c/world@lemmy.world
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

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] enbyecho@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago

How do you stop consumers from wasting food from the production side?

I'm glad you asked. More diversified and de-centralized production that shortens the food chain. That actually solves more problems than it may appear, key among them consumer understanding of what "good" is when it comes to produce, which pulls demand. A lot of produce is wasted simply because it's not the right size or blemished in some way - sorting to meet consumer demand for perfect produce is that very first layer of waste. And because consumers don't really know what fresh is they assume that 2-4 week old corn you buy wrapped in plastic is just perfectly fine. Yet, because it's 2-4 weeks old it isn't going to last much longer. Long food chains also mean increased handling which means increased risk of contamination which means increased washing and treatment, leading to degradation and waste. Bagged salad is a great example of that. When I sold salad at the farmer's market it was picked that morning or the night before and easily lasted 2-3 weeks refrigerated.

When you shorten the food chain more "imperfect" produce gets used, it's in the hands of consumers sooner and thus lasts longer and, crucially, is more nutritious both because it doesn't need to be optimized for shelf life and because it's fresher. (if you search for something like "loss of nutrition in produce over time" you'll get lots of resources on this - tl;dr this got studied a ton during WWII and it's very much a thing.

There's a ton more detail I could add here - it's a complex subject. But the bottom line is a lot of waste happens because of decentralization and our own, as consumers, distance from production.

this post was submitted on 18 May 2024
253 points (96.7% liked)

World News

39416 readers
2328 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

Lemmy World Partners

News !news@lemmy.world

Politics !politics@lemmy.world

World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world

Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
quinten@lemmy.world
NewsAutoMod@lemmy.world
jordanlund@lemmy.world
Tenthrow@lemmy.world
little_cow@lemmy.world
lemmyAtom@lemmy.world
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world