253
submitted 1 month ago by girlfreddy@lemmy.ca to c/world@lemmy.world

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
[-] irmoz@lemmy.world 22 points 1 month ago

"Without chemicals"

Okay, no need to take this seriously.

[-] charles@lemmy.world 61 points 1 month ago

A new non-toxic pesticide can be valuable regardless of the journalist who wrote an article.

[-] NegativeInf@lemmy.world 14 points 1 month ago

While I agree in principle, the people who write the headlines are very often not the writers of the article or the people who are actually working on the solutions to the problems.

[-] Mango@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

Idk man. I'm extremely curious of this matter that isn't made of chemicals. Maybe it's lasers. Photons don't count right?

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

World News

37383 readers
2994 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

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 1 year ago
MODERATORS