Scientists make insects' sex attractant traps to save crops

Panaji, July 30 (UNI) In an innovative technique, agro-scientists are trapping crop-damaging pests and insects by using the trick these small creatures use to attract their male partners for sex by secreting pheromones.

Pheromones, the specific chemical substances in the ecosystem, work as a perfect medium of communication for sending signals to their own ilk for courtship, from distances as far as one kilometre.

This is possible, courtesy the successful synthetic sex pheromone development research undertaken by the Coimbatore-based premier Sugarcane Breeding Institute (SBI) in Tamil Nadu, under the prestigious Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR).

The scientists have developed artificial sex pheromones on a commercial scale to tackle the Internode Borer (INB), considered a major sugarcane pest in peninsular India.

The pest, which used to affect the yield and quality of jaggery severely with its modifying food habits, is now under check with the scientists developing a protocol to use the chemical, according to the SBI director Dr N Vijayan Nair.

Dr Nair told UNI that the institute has done pioneering work on the sex pheromones of various moth borers of sugarcane, with field trials yielding encouraging results.

The SBI had entered into a contract service research with three sugar factories and indigenised the pheromone production. One of the funding aencies M/s Rajashree Sugars and Chemicals Limited at Theni in Tamil Nadu has commenced commercial production of pheromones of various sugarcane moth borers.

It has also succeeded in developing a cost-effective prototype water-trap that could mass-trap the male moths and destroy them, resulting in minimal crop damage.

Under this, synthetic pheromones are impregnated in rubber septa that act as lure. A thin film of engine waste oil is added to the water in the trap to kill the entrapped moths. It may cost as low as Rs 400 per acre for using the water traps.

The water trap is to be maintained by removing the dead moths and recharging then with water and engine waste oil at regular intervals to have maximum efficiency, according to scientists.

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