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AgResearch today announced a groundbreaking discovery that is an important step forward in the control of insect pests.
The discovery is a new strain of bacterium isolated from insects known as Yersinia entomophaga MH96 that will kill many insects, once they are infected, within two to three days.
Globally there has been a push for biological control of insects rather than the use of chemical insecticides. The most common form of biological control to date has been Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). There are many strains of Bt and each strain targets a specific insect sub-group. What makes this latest discovery of such significance is that Yersinia entomophaga is deadly against an impressively wide range of insects including beetles, grass grub, moths and caterpillars– the major destroyers of agricultural and horticultural crops around the world.
“I can see significant appeal for Yersinia entomophaga around the world as the demand for environmentally friendly control versus the use of insecticides continues to grow. Yersinia entomophaga is a new member of the Yersinia bacteria and is the first bacterium from this group to contain potent insecticidal toxins,” said AgResearch Scientist Dr Mark Hurst.
Mark Hurst says that Yersinia provides an excellent ‘clean’ green alternative to control pests and will also be useful to other research areas as a perfect model system.
“This bacterium has evolved over countless years and is highly tuned to kill insect species. The bacterium has evolved to efficiently invade an insect host and evade its immune system along with barraging the host with highly potent toxins. Apart from its obvious use as a biological control agent in the control of insect pest species the bacterium can be used as a test bed for other research such as understanding how a bacterium invades a host and evades the host immune system using insects as a model system. In some aspects insects have a similar immune system to mammals,” he said. Hurst scanned more than 40 different diseased grass grubs gathered from around the South Island in the journey to making his discovery.
“We were unable to raise grass grubs artificially in the laboratory. After gathering a sample we noticed that in this particular batch many of them were dead and we were able to isolate the new bacterial species from there,” Hurst said.
The bio-control could be delivered through a variety of technologies including seed drilling, or through bait which would attract only targeted species.
“The bacterium has shown limited survival in the field so it would not effect the environment over the long term. Safety testing has also identified no effect on bees,” he said.
Dr Hurst and the research team first discovered Yersinia entomophaga in 1996. For more than ten years the scientists refined their discovery and secured the necessary patents. They are now ready to take the bacterium to the world as a marketable, commercial product.
Biological control markets are huge and largely untapped as discoveries such as this are rare. Grass grub and Porina are the major pastoral pests of New Zealand agricultural land used for dairy farming and beetles are a big destroyer of many field crops including maize, cotton and sugar cane, as well as turf grasses in many global markets such as Australia, Europe and the United States.
“This is exactly the sort of investment in research and development that will make a valuable contribution to the economy,” said AgResearch CEO Dr Andrew West.
“This discovery not only offers the potential to solve some serious problems plaguing New Zealand’s pastoral sector, but may be useful for other pastoral and cropping sectors worldwide. Isolating this bacterium is also a boon to scientists in other research fields,“ he said.
Editor's Note: Original news release can be found here.
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