Description

The best thing about a survey is that it helps to get the opinion of people. And to get the most relevant information, it is the ones that are directly touched that should be asked: the farmers and the public. As it concerns their field of activity, the farmers should be the most informed about Xylella fastidiosa. And since they are the principal users, their decision about using or not our product is essential to us. What we did was simple. We created a short survey to get to know if the different actors accepted our cure, even if it was a GMO.

Farmer's survey

We went to see the farmers, directly at the "Salon des agricultures de Provence" or indirectly by emailing them. We got answers from 9 enterprises, 6 of them producing organic and AOP food.

We learned that the X. fastidiosa’s problem is well known within the agricultural field. Moreover, they all agree that it was a subject of concern and they do think it is one of their priorities. They also think that the communication within their field of activity is correct even if progress could be made with the communication within the retailers and with the population.

As for the final form of the cure, some prefer pulverization, others injection or vaporization: the most efficient way depends strongly on the type of agriculture. In addition, it is better if the cure is also preventive, which is quite obvious. They would want to be able to sell their product shortly after the cure is done most of the answered varied between 0 et 90 days. When we asked them what was the characteristic they would value the most in our product, the answered were efficacity and conformity with labels. However, only 4 said they would use a modified virus as a cure against X. fastidiosa. For 8 on 9, they would prefer a purified organic compound.

Thanks to this survey, we adapt our project to their demands and change the initial lytic phage approach for a non replicative one: the phage-like particles

Public survey

We wanted to know if the population was ready to accept our cure - a genetically modified virus - so we made a survey to get their opinion. To ensure the broadest possible audience, we made the survey both in English and in French. The survey was done via google.form, we send the link to all networks, asking them to send it further into their networks. As we are mainly students, it has to be taken into account that the proportion of answer from students may cause a bias in the general answers.

As you can see from the chart, more than ⅘ of the people who answered our survey are aged between 18-25. More than ⅔ hadn’t ever heard about X. fastidiosa ! For those who knew, it was for more than half thanks to the media or from word of mouth. They felt in ¾ of the answered concerned, interested and involved by this bacteria.

We wanted to test their knowledge about synthetic biology: the science of tackling nature. ⅔ did know about it, that is probably because of the great proportion of biology student in the survey. They thought this science was great, 90% of the studied population had a good opinion. More specifically, the feeling they felt about the synthetic biology was, from most common to least: interested, enthusiastic, confident and concern being about as much present.

They all had a good opinion of our project. Once again we wanted specificity. We asked them and got basically the same result as for synthetic biology: interested, enthusiastic, confident and concern being about as much present. They also said that the most important characteristics of our project are: first of all the protection of the tree and the destruction of X. fastidiosa, on the second-hand ecology principles and the specificity aspect of the cure...

About the GMO matter, their opinion is not well defined, more than half of them answered "it's depend". By this survey, we collected the opinion of the public for the GMO subject. Thanks to the feedback, we saw that they are not all hermetic about the GMO subject. Most of the peoples are aware that a GMO So our project if we manage a good communication campaign, could be accepted by the population.