I Introduction & Background

Since our project would be used in agriculture, it is pretty important for us to understand how farmers think of our project. Not only would this inform us how the market would look like in the future, but it would also enable us to know how we can develop our project and make it more beneficial to the farmer.

Because of those reasons mentioned above, we conducted an interview with farmers. The objective of this practice activity is to know more about the current situation of scale insect problem, know how the market will be, and understand how we can develop our project.From the conversation, we knew that farmers use both chemical ways and physical ways to kill scale insects.

II Feedback Result of Our Interview

1. Chemical ways of killing scale insects

The main active ingredients contained in chemical insecticides are methidathion and cypermethrin.

(1) Methidathion:

Methidathion E.C 40%, which has a molecular formula of C6H11N2O4PS3, can play a strong role in killing the scale insects, but it will have a great impact on the environment. It can be harmful to skin contact, and it’s very toxic if swallowed. Further research told us that this chemical is also very toxic to aquatic environment, and it may cause long-term adverse effects.

(2) Cypermethrin

Cypermethrin, which has a chemical formula of C22H19CL2NO3, can simultaneously smash the insects. but it is also harmful to environment. It could irritate human being’s respiratory system and skin, and it’s also toxic to aquatic environment.

According to one of the farmers, using chemical pesticide would also create an unbearable smell, which he thought may harm his body and cause health problem. Another farmer also said that the soil would turn to a pale color after a long time of pesticide use, which may indicate a huge damage to environment, as well as an unbalanced ecological system in that area.

2. Physical ways of killing scale insects

Physical methods are generally simpler, but they are too expensive to apply to large-scale cultivation of succulent and waste of labor. If farmers want to use physical ways to kill scale insects, they have to pour a large amount of water, or actually go into fields to kill them by hands. Therefore, it would be hard to kill all scale insects, and it would take lots of efforts, which would be extremely costly as well.

III Conclusion of This Research & Interview Activity

By analyzing these killing methods, we can conclude that there is an urgent need for a low-pollution, low-cost method of insecticide in the method of de-worming.

Since our approach is relatively low in both cost and labor, it can certainly meet the needs of society. Besides, it is environmental-friendly since biological waste is much easier to degrade by the environment. If farmers accdentally pour E.coli liquid to the plants, the suicide design inside the E.coli will let E.coli to kill themselves, so there won’t be any problem or concern about the potential problem of applying E.coli to the field.

In May 2017, when our team was researching the safety topics of our pesticide mate, we contacted with two senior Botanical experts in Kunming Institute of Botany, China Academy of Science. Scientists showed great interest in our project, and they share their ideas and knowledge on these topics with us.

The main topics of our discussion were, whether there are ingredients on the surface of plants that could be potentially damaged by our product and whether traditional chemical pesticides have that serious effect on plants as stated in some reports.

↑One of the letters sent by Yunchang, to Jianchu Xu, one of the botanists in Kunming Institute of Botany.

Questions inside the letter:

Q1: What is the difference of the wax-chitin-protein layers between plants and scale insect?

Q2: What are the common problems brought by the traditional pesticides to the plants?

Q3: (We realized later that there is a problem within our question) Can SacB promoter induces the SRRz lysis system when sucrose exists specifically?

We sent this email to the other scientists as well and received two replies from them.

↑One of the letter from Gui Heng, PhD

Thanks to their (Jianchu Xu, Ph.D.; Gui Heng, Ph.D.) kind replies!

From their letters, we know that:

1.Plants sometimes secret chitinase as an immune mechanism, thus theoretically there is no chitin on the surface of plants.

2.Plants may be harmed when the concentration of pesticides is high or when specific pesticides lead to allergy.

3.Plants keep sucrose as their energy storage material, thus would not release it and induce our bacteria to release enzyme. Our ‘sucrose-induced’ system is safe on the surface of plants and would work on scale insect.

Via frequent correspondence, we set up a long-term communication with scientists within this field. Thanks for their patience and interest!