Recipient Organization
LUNA INNOVATIONS INCORPORATED
1 RIVERSIDE CIR STE 400
ROANOKE,VA 24016
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
Luna will design, manufacture, and test of first generation spacer textiles to prevent plant infestation using the tomato plant as a model system and insect pests on tomato. The proposed research will utilize inexpensive, commercially available materials which will make the process cost effective and scalable.
Animal Health Component
(N/A)
Research Effort Categories
Basic
100%
Applied
(N/A)
Developmental
(N/A)
Goals / Objectives
Objective 1: Design a novel spacer fabric for insect controlOur team will design a novel spacer fabric that optimizes pore tortuosity to prevent insect penetration, yet allow air flow and moisture transmission to provide optimum plant growth and development.Objective 2: Incorporate insect repellents or insecticides into the spacer fabricAfter designing the spacer fabric, addition of non-toxic or toxic insect killing agents will be incorporated into the spacer fabric. A repellent, sticky surface and insecticide will be investigated for use in the spacer fabric. In addition, encapsulation of the repellent or insecticide will be examined for prolonged presence and increased effectiveness.Objective 3: Evaluate plant protection using novel spacer fabrics The effectiveness of the novel spacer fabrics with and without killing agents will be evaluated on a single model plant system with examples of typical insect pests of this plant for proof of concept. Down selected fabrics will then be examined on whole tomato plants at the 10 leaf stage for a final evaluation.
Project Methods
A novel test system has been constructed to minimize the amount of textile and plant material needed for these studies. The studies will be conducted with a single model plant system and examples of typical insect pests for this plant for proof of concept. The plant model will be the tomato, Solanum lycopersicum, which will be grown from seed under 16:18 h light conditions in green houses at NC State University. There are a number of insect pests of tomatoes. Major pests are the tobacco budworm, aphids, silverleaf white flies, flea beetles, tomato hornworm, and brown and green stick bugs; minor pests are thrips, spider mites and cut worms.The test system utilizes a plastic petri dish (12.6 cm2) for the base and spacers constructed from soft plastic to serve as a shelf for the spacer fabric test samples. The plastic spacer prevents direct contact of the leaf with the test fabric; the spacer thickness places the fabric within 10 mm or less of the leaf surface. A leaf disc covering the entire bottom of the test system will be placed on top of three layers of wet filter paper (Whatman No. 1). The wet filter paper keeps the humidity high in the test device during the 24 h incubation period which is critical to maintaining the viability of the leaf and insects. Insects are then transferred with a camel hair brush to the exposed top surface of the textile (25 insects per test arena), the top of the petri dish is used to cover the area, and the edges of the petri dish are sealed with parafilm. For these studies, the textile being evaluated will be powder coated with dried egg protein and used as a marker to measure insect contact with the textile as the insect migrates from above the cloth to the tomato leaf surface. The protein transfer to the insect will be measured using an ELISA. The ELISA technique for marking and studying insect migration has been conducted before by the Roe lab (Reising et al., 2013). The ELISA is sensitive to the low nanogram level.The studies to measure transfer rate will be conducted using neonates of the tobacco budworm, Heliothis virescens, since these insects are easy to rear in the laboratory and represent an important pest of tomato. Budworm neonates represent one of the larger insect types which might infest tomato as newly hatched larvae and would represent the most likely insect that could penetrate quickly enough through the textile to minimize textile exposure. Third instars of the tobacco budworm will also be tested; our goal is for the textile to achieve at least 100% exclusion for insects > the size of a third instar budworm with the possibility of even smaller insects excluded by tortuosity. Additional tomato pests will be examined if time and resources permit. Most of the insect pests of tomato listed earlier are already in culture at NCSU. All experiments will be replicated at least five times with ELISA's conducted on individual insects that penetrate the textile during a 24 h incubation period (16:8 L:D; 27degrees C, 60% relative humidity in the incubator). The expected outcome from this task is a spatial fabric core as porous as possible but with a very tortuous path so that if insects do penetrate the fabric, a maximum amount of egg protein will be transferred from the textile to the insect. The smaller the insect, the greater the textile interaction since the distance for crawling relative to the body length is longer. Insects larger than or equal to the size of a third instar budworm should be excluded in the final fabric design.