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A recently approved EPA organic pesticide to mitigate the decline of the bee population in the United States will be delivered in a new way – by the bees themselves when they land on a field and bloom.
Clonostachys rosea CR-7 Fungicide, also known as Vectorite, was created by Bee Vectoring Technologies in Canada for use on "high value" crops, such as strawberries, blueberries, almonds and sunflower. It will be deployed this fall.
In the United States, beekeepers reported a loss of nearly 41% of their honey bee colonies in the past year, with winter losses being the highest ever recorded. Some crops, including blueberries and cherries, are 90% dependent on pollination by bees. Other bee-dependent crops range from carrots and tomatoes to onions and broccoli.
Honey bees pollinate $ 15 billion of food crops in the United States each year. Worldwide, three out of four harvests in the world, providing food for humans, depend on pollinators.
The decline of bees is linked to pesticides and farmland is now 48 times more toxic to them than it was 25 years ago. In 2017, scientists were "alarmed" to discover that fungicides, a type of pesticide targeting molds, are one of the most powerful factors associated with the sharp drop in the number of bumblebees in the United States.
Earthjustice, an environmental justice group, recently sued the EPA after the government agency had expanded the use of "highly toxic" pesticides, sulfoxaflor.
John Swanson, who runs a sunflower, soybean, corn and wheat operation with his son in northern Minnesota, has been experimenting with CR7 for three years while working with BVT for testing.
"Most farmers are very concerned about the use of products that can harm the environment," he said. "Bees are important for growing sunflower. I have been working on seed production for about 40 years and bees are the only pollinator for the production of hybrid sunflower seeds. "
He said that one of the biggest challenges to sunflower crops is a mushroom called sclerotia.
"This fungicide removes sclerotia by about 40%," he said. "It's the best product I've seen so far."
Despite efforts to introduce bee-adapted pesticides, some experts say this will not solve the problem, as farmers will continue to use insecticides, which are a form of pesticide, to kill phytophagous insects.
BVT uses bumble bees and honey bees to distribute Clonostachys rosea CR-7, a natural organism that blocks the disease. This system, which has been in development for more than ten years, moves bees into an inoculation powder dispenser before leaving their hive.
The powder adheres to the bees' fur and the fungicide's spores are deposited on the plants during the bee's journey. When it is absorbed by a plant, the fungicide allows it to block diseases such as botrytis in strawberries, which is the most common strawberry disease in California.
The EPA says that Vectorite is the first pesticide approved by the EPA to be delivered by bees.
Ashish Malik, CEO of Bee Vectoring Technologies, said he hoped Vectorcide would reduce or even eliminate the need for chemical fungicides. He added that the product had been evaluated according to rigorous criteria in order to ensure that it had no adverse effect on the bees.
Other companies have also come up with innovations to protect bee populations. The food giant, Monsanto, has developed an RNA interface designed to kill parasites by disabling their genes. Eltopia MiteNot monitors the activity of bees and diffuses intense heat to prevent male mites from fertilizing their mite eggs on their bee larvae.
The USDA regularly updates its list of licensed organic products, although natural substances are not necessarily less toxic than their synthetic counterparts.
But Malik said that the product of his company was the first to be delivered by the bees and that the application being targeted, it would take much less compared to traditional spray applications.
"Vectorization by bees is a natural and meaningful approach, and our vision is to develop this system to become a viable alternative to the inefficient practice of spraying crops around the world," Malik said. a meeting.
Bumblebees and commercially managed honey bees are already used by farmers to pollinate crops.
"We grafted on this and added an additional value proposition to this already established industry practice," Malik said.
BVT has chosen its particular microbial strain, Clonostachys rosea CR-7, because it can quickly colonize the plant tissue around the flower of the plant.
"It protects crops against pathogens that penetrate and attack crops in or through the flower zone," Malik said. "This makes it an ideal choice for delivery with bees."
Sheila Colla, a conservation biologist at York University, said the BVT method did not stop the decline of bees.
"Insecticides are applied to crops to prevent pests from damaging them, and I suppose these farmers will continue to use insecticides in addition to these fungicides to control fungal diseases," she said. "I do not see any evidence of replacement of these insecticides."
Colla said that using managed bees to deliver the product actually posed a threat to wild bee populations because the spread of bee pathogens to wild bees is One of the main threats to the decline of wild bee populations.
"It is highly likely that our species, which has experienced a rapid decline, like the dreaded bumblebee with endangered patches, has probably done so because it has been exposed to a new disease coming from." Bees managed, "she said.
Although technologies can find solutions to the problems posed by pesticide application and pest management, ensuring the sustainability of agricultural ecosystems will require a more holistic approach, said Colla.
"This includes protecting the biodiversity of our native pollinators for long-term sustainability," she said. "Biodiversity is synonymous with resilience, especially in a changing climate.
"By moving our systems so that they rely more on managed bees, we put all our eggs in one basket, so to speak," she continued. "If anything happened to these few managed species and they collapsed, as we saw with Western Bumble Bee and with the collapse disorder of colonies in American bees, we are jeopardizing our ability to pollinate crops. "
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