Recipient Organization
IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY
2229 Lincoln Way
AMES,IA 50011
Performing Department
Entomology
Non Technical Summary
The research described in this proposal will focus on controlling insect pests, especially those that are affecting agricultural production. It will have an emphasis on the development and testing of novel chemicals for pest management, especially those derived from plants. It will address new ways of using plant products to kill, knock down, or repel pests, as well as the plant products being used to enhance the potency of conventional insecticides. New synthetic compounds will be designed off the natural products obtained from plants, and they will also be tested for efficacy against pest insects.It is also the intent of this investigation to emphasize the safety of the natural and the derivatives, especially the ecotoxicology. This aspect of the project will consider the environmental breakdown times, the chemicals formed in the breakdown process, and the possible effects on non-target insects, for example, pollinators like honey bees, native bees, and monarch butterflies. New methods of detecting extremely low concentrations of insecticides in the environmental will be developed, to help regulatory agencies assess the possible risks of insecticides to the ecosystem. Science-based risk assessments that can be conducted by U.S. EPA will be beneficial to production agriculture as well as to the environment.
Animal Health Component
50%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
40%
Applied
50%
Developmental
10%
Goals / Objectives
The goal of this projects is to discover improved ways of managing insect, tick, and mite pests, (1) through exploration of natural products as new insecticides/acaricides and (2) through developing methods of enhancing older, conventional pesticides, (3) but with care to ensure that future technologies will be sustainable in the long term.Specific objectives are:Develop more effective pest control chemistries and formulations by exploiting and modifying natural plant chemistries.Determine the fate of different types of agrochemicals used in protection of food and fiber crops, as well as insects, ticks, mites, and other invertebrate animals.
Project Methods
Many plant essential oils and plant extracts will be screened in laboratory bioassays to determine the level of interest; the oils or extracts that are most promising from the bioassays will be fractionated to determine which portion of the extract contains the best efficacy. Then individual compounds will be isolated from the fractions and identified by NMR, GC-MS, and comparison with known standards of related compounds. Synthesis of biorational compounds will be conducted in the laboratory using conventional synthetic organic chemistry approaches. Laboratory bioassays will again be used to focus on the compounds with the best potential. Quantitative structure-activity relationships will be developed with the help of software capable of ascertaining the most important parameters out of 200 descriptors. In some cases mechanism-of-action studies will use binding experiments that employ radiotracer ligands, while others will focus on RNAseq to determine effects of natural plant products on various genes in insect pests. Other mechanism-of-action studies will explore the effects of natural plant molecules on heterologously-expressed neuroreceptors, via collaboration with an investigator in the et College at Iowa State University. Analytical chemistry for quantification of insecticide residues will utilize HPLC-MS/MS and GC-MS. Formal classroom instruction and formal laboratory instruction will be involved in delivery of knowledge, as well as access to hands-on methodology for synthesis, bioassays, mechanism-of-action, and residue analysis. Evaluation of the success of our research projects can be accomplished by assessing the success of graduate students getting good positions in the work force once they graduate and their success in getting their research published in journal articles, review articles, book chapters, and books. The impact factor of the journals in which they publish is also an indicator of the quality and impact of the research carried out. Another way that the success of the project will be evaluated is the number of disclosures, provisional patents, and final patent applications result in patents being issued; further, the licensing of the technologies by the Iowa State University Research Foundation will also be a reflection of successful original research being conducted. The commercialization of natural or biorational products by companies that license our technology will also provide an indicator of success. Discovery and publication of a mechanism of action for a new plant-based or biorational compound will also be considered as a successful endpoint for the project. Following discovery of a bioactive molecule, efficacy in the lab should be well understood within 1 year. Within 2 years, it is expected that semi-field and field testing have been initiated, with expectations that formulations and delivery methods also will have been developed by the commercial partner. Methods of evaluation in the classrooms will be based on the success in the students in achieving the primary understanding the principles and approaches, as determined by the outcomes assessment for each class. Gauging the success of the environmental-fate research on the degree and timing of exposure of nontarget species of insects to various insecticide residues will depend on the results of science-based risk assessments developed by regulatory agencies, commercial partners, and farmers and consumers. Changes in the farmers' choices of insecticides or application times and rates of insecticides on corn and soybeans will be a reflection of the new knowledge contributed by this project, as observed by the Field Crops Extension Entomologist, the soybean IPM Entomologist, and the corn rootworm IPM Entomologist in our Department of Entomology.