Dates: January 1998 - December 2000

Funding: EU CRAFT

Countries: Europe-wide

Collaborators: Russell IPM, UK; Cardiff Chemicals, UK; Biagro Biostimulants, Spain; Biosystems (France) Sarl, France; Urania Gmbh, Germany; North East Wales Institute

NRI Project Leaders: David Hall

Background

Sex pheromones are used in monitoring and control of many lepidopterous pests. A wide range of slow-release formulations is available for the synthetic pheromones, but these all give an increased release rate with increase in temperature, and most show an exponential relationship between release rate and temperature. However, most of the pests are active and mate at night when temperatures are generally cooler than during the day. Thus most of the pheromone is released at a time when the pests are not active and is probably wasted.

Objective

The objective of this project was to develop a "smart" formulation that gives a higher release rate at lower temperatures, or at least does not give the rapid increase in release rate with increasing temperature seen in other formulations. Ideally it should be possible to tune the formulation to switch from low to high release rate at a temperature appropriate for the particular area, crop and pest concerned.

Results

A novel approach to controlling release rate was shown to be applicable to a range of pheromones under laboratory conditions and the scope for controlling the "switch" temperature was explored. These systems showed only a slight increase in release rate with increasing temperature in the range 15°-40°C, and the switch temperature could be adjusted within this range. Field trials of mating disruption of codling moth were carried out in UK, Spain and Germany using a formulation based on this principle.

UPTAKE

A patent application is being prepared and application of this approach to a range of moth pheromones is being explored.

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