The insect glue, produced from edible oils, was inspired by plants such as sundews that use the strategy to capture their prey. A key advantage of physical pesticides over toxic pesticides is that pests are highly unlikely to evolve resistance, as this would require them to develop much larger and stronger bodies, while bigger beneficial insects, like bees, are not trapped by the drops.
The drops were tested on the western flower thrip, which are known to attack more than 500 species of vegetable, fruit and ornamental crops. More than 60% of the thrips were captured within the two days of the test, and the drops remained sticky for weeks.
Work on the sticky pesticide is continuing, but Dr Thomas Kodger at Wageningen University & Research, in the Netherlands, who is part of the self defence project doing the work, said: “We hope it will have not nearly as disastrous side-effects on the local environment or on accidental poisonings of humans. And the alternatives are much worse, which are potential starvation due to crop loss or the overuse of chemical pesticides, which are a known hazard.”
This is a really, really, bad idea.
The issue is that sticky traps are non-specific. Any insect the size of a trip can be trapped. Then when predators are attracted to all the free food, they are potentially stuck or damaged as well.
Thrips are also one of the easiest species to control using predatory species.
Well at least one person agrees with me.
Thrips are a pain in the ass but if you use pesticides you kill the beneficials that eat them, for example Minute Pirate Bugs (Orius insidious).
Swirski mites are my favorite in the greenhouse or nethouse. They work better than any pesticide I have ever seen.
Article says larger bugs are ok
And all the smaller beneficials? A huge number are the same size or not much bigger than thrips. They will be caught by this spray.
Do you have examples?
I’ve mentioned some in posts here but among the smaller ones I’d include ladybugs, green lacewings, spiders, minute pirate bugs, spined soldier bugs, braconid wasps, trichogrammatid wasps, etc. Trichogrammatid wasps for example are only about 1mm in size! But they perform a vital function.
They are if the stickiness is tuned so that larger, predatory insects are easily able to escape the glue.
Most beneficials that go after thrips are not that much bigger than them. The study doesn’t seem to mention this (tho I’m still looking for the full text).
Yes but can they dislodge the glue from their mouth parts? Very unlikely if it’s strong enough to hold the smaller insects.