14 DAY TRIAL // Researchers have identified a natural substance in a fungus which infects the green foxtail plant, that might just be the first commercial repellent for stink bugs.
Stink bugs are bugging people all over the world, as they invade territories and become pests to farm crops, and also because they emit a sickening odor when crushed.
On the East Coast, there is an invasion of stink bugs, and people are starting to get really annoyed because of the damage to farm crops and the unbearable odor, but scientists might just have a good news for everybody.
They isolated a natural substance in a fungus that infects green foxtail plants and acts as a stink bug repellent.
The green foxtail plant is very common in Japan, as well as in the United States and other countries in the world, and the fungus that lives inside it seems to act as a protection against insect pests and diseases.
Hiromitsu Nakajima and colleagues carried out several laboratory tests and found out that extracts of the fungus repelled the white-spotted stink bug they used as a test subject (the white-spotted stink bug was used because it is a common species and it is easy to maintain and handle under lab conditions).
They found a compound in the extract that can repel up to 90% of stink bugs and might become the key ingredient of future stink bugs repellents.
This substance is actually as effective as naphthalene (used to protect fabrics against moths) and when the researchers tested a chemically modified version of the substance, its effectiveness doubled.
The Japanese scientists had a bit of experience with stink bugs, as they are very frequent in Japan, where they have been a major pest of rice crops for a long time.
These insects have reached the United States somewhere around 1998, and since then, they have spread all over the East Coast, especially in the Mid-Atlantic states where they annoy people and damage fruit and vegetable crops.
To try and control the pests, farmers are using commercial insecticides, but a stink bug repellent could be just as effective and less pollutant for the crops.
This new stink bugs repellent study appeared in ACS' bi-weekly Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.