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Revision as of 00:01, 24 October 2017
Introduction to the Problem
When succulent plants are planted, no matter indoor or outdoor, they are easily infested by scale insects and mealybugs, which are the most common pests that people can find on succulent plants. The scale insects are like a plague which can spread quickly from plants to plants, leaf to leaf.
However, unlike other insects, it is pretty difficult and complicated to get rid of the scale insects, for they often hide in the nooks and crannies of the succulents plants which can not be easily seen and their wax coating which prevent them from the damage of a variety of pesticides. In order to maintain the optimal health of the succulent plant, people have spent years seeking an ideal solution which can effectively avoid the infestation of the scales and perpetually keep them from sucking out the sap of the plants.
Current Solutions
| Extant Solutions | Weakness | Additional Information | |
|---|---|---|---|
| (1) | Use horticultural oil or neem oil | Even though the horticultural oil and neem oil are effective in killing some pest insects, scale insects have been excluded from its effectiveness. With assistance of the shell of scale insects, they will not be suffocated by the horticultural oil and are free enough to continue sucking the sap from plants. | In some cases, horticultural oil and neem oil could be an effective and safe way to kill pest insects without harming the plants. The mechanism is that oil could block the air holes (spiracles) through which insects breathe, causing them to die from suffocation. |
| (2) | Use insecticide spray, like Malathion | Malathion is a good spray to use for outdoor plants. However, its smell is intolerable for most people when used for indoor plants. Since most succulent plants are planted indoor, this is not an advisable solution. | Malathion is a pesticide which widely used in agriculture, residential landscaping, public recreation areas, and in public health pest control programs such as mosquito eradication. |
| (3) | Pick off or prune heavily-infested leaves | This method could directly hurt the health condition of the succulent plants. Even though this is the easiest way to solve the infestation, this is also the most inadvisable one. | Usually when succulent plants have been heavily infested, people have no choice but pick off the leaves and hurt their plants. |
| (4) | Wash the plants with a strong stream of water | Succulent plants should be cultivated in comparably dry environment. Too much water is actually a catastrophe for them. Although strong streams of water could wash off the scales, it will also destroy the plants at the same time in some degrees. | N/A |
| (5) | Use cotton swabs dipped into the alcohol | It is always hard for people to control the amount of alcohol and the percentage of the alcohol that for killing the scales. When the amount of alcohol is not enough, no effect will occur; however, when using too much alcohol, because the leaves directly contact with the alcohol, they will be negatively affected. | The word ‘alcohol’ is not very exactly defined here. In most cases, the ‘alcohol’ can be understand as common medical alcohol of unspecified concentration. |
| (6) | Personal created spray: Use a little travel sized spray bottle with 70% isopropyl alcohol | When using the 70% isopropyl alcohol, since it is not the final products, costumers themselves need to mix the alcohol with a certain amount of water. Even though this method seems to work well, inexperience of people could cause great inconvenience and may minimize its advantages. | Original function: To decrease germs in minor cuts and scrapes. (This method is created by an unknown individual, so it dose not have any authoritative guarantee.) |
Our Solutions
The current solutions that enumerated above all have several defectives, which make them not the best solution to choose. But with our pesticide mate, all these drawbacks could be overcome. Unlike the commercially chemical insecticide, with the help of E. coli and three different enzymes that it produced, we can dissolve the solid shell of scale insects without doing any harm to the plants.
Commercialize Our Design
To make our pesticide mate commercialize and convenient for people to use, several improvements are going to be made. Firstly, E. coli that we designed should be transformed into genetically engineered bacteria. To fulfill this goal, we corroborate with the Team SIAT-SCIE; the enzyme that they found in tardigrades-microscopic animals enables our E. coli to endure harsh circumstance but still maintain activity. Then we could dry up our E. coli and turn it into powder form.
Those powder-like E. coli are now able to be packed and transport to different stores and cities. During this transportation, the activity of our powder-like E. coli is still remained and can be resurrected when consumers mix the powder with water of specific amount and temperature. When this product comes into the market, the only thing that customers have to do is mix it with water and spray the special water on the infected plants.
