Thesis subject
Using Adhesive Spheres as a Physical Pesticide
To protect crops and plants against pests many pesticides are used. Chemical, poisonous pesticides, however, also negatively affect the environment. We create pesticides based on a physical/mechanical principle similar to the trichomes that are plant’s natural defenses.
The concept (Fig 1A) consists of applying sticky oil particles onto a (hydrophobic) leaf. The insect then walks or lands onto the oil particle and gets trapped. Trichomes are found in nature are shown in Fig. 1B. The adhesive particles that we make resemble pest strips that are cut into <1mm sized pieces (Fig. 1C).
We create the material by oxidising and crosslinking vegetable oils (Fig. 1D) that leads to very sticky, adhesive, materials, as shown in Fig. 1E and 1F. Tests have shown that the material indeed immobolises pests, in this case, thrips (Fig 1G). We are looking for a MSc thesis student that would like to work on this project. Subprojects can be discussed with the supervisors, projects include:
(1) Adhesiveness as function of oil composition and processing
(2) Volatile incorporation to attract or repel pests or natural predators
(3) Direct measurement of adhesiveness to different insect body parts
Are you interested? Please contact via ezo.thesis@wur.nl