{"id":1766,"date":"2010-10-27T15:02:03","date_gmt":"2010-10-27T19:02:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sciencebusiness.technewslit.com\/?p=1766"},"modified":"2010-10-27T15:02:03","modified_gmt":"2010-10-27T19:02:03","slug":"researchers-process-tobacco-into-organic-pesticide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/?p=1766","title":{"rendered":"Researchers Process Tobacco Into Organic Pesticide"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_1768\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1768\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/Tobacco_ERS.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1768\" title=\"Tobacco_ERS\" src=\"http:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/Tobacco_ERS.jpg\" alt=\"Tobacco farming (ERS\/USDA)\" width=\"300\" height=\"210\" srcset=\"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/Tobacco_ERS.jpg 300w, https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/Tobacco_ERS-150x105.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1768\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">(Economic Research Service, USDA)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Tobacco may be the plant we all love to hate, but researchers at the University of Western Ontario (UWO) in London have confirmed properties of tobacco that make it a potential natural alternative to traditional commercial pesticides. This potential as a pesticide can also provide tobacco farmers with another, more benign, use for their crops.<\/p>\n<p>For centuries, gardeners have used home-made mixtures of tobacco and water, taking advantage of the presence of toxic nicotine in tobacco, as a natural pesticide to kill insect pests. Chemical engineering professor <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eng.uwo.ca\/research\/compendium\/faculty\/cbriens.htm\">Cedric Briens<\/a> and colleagues at UWO investigated these properties further.<\/p>\n<p>The research team used a process called pyrolysis that heats tobacco leaves to a temperature of 500 degrees C (900 degrees F) in a vacuum. This process released a substance from tobacco called bio-oil, which they tested on various fungi, bacteria, and the Colorado Potato Beetle, an agricultural pest that has become resistant to many commercial pesticides. They found the bio-oil killed the beetles and blocked the growth of three other microorganisms damaging to agriculture in Canada, two types of bacteria and one fungus.<\/p>\n<p>Even after removing the nicotine from the bio-oil, it still had an effect on the beetle. While the nicotine-free substance did not kill the beetle outright, it killed the pest&#8217;s appetite, which saved the plants from the beetle.<\/p>\n<p>The results were published in the journal <a href=\"http:\/\/pubs.acs.org\/stoken\/presspac\/presspac\/full\/10.1021\/ie100329z#afn3\"><em>Industrial &amp; Engineering Chemistry Research<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tobacco may be the plant we all love to hate, but researchers at the University of Western Ontario (UWO) in London have confirmed properties of tobacco that make it a potential natural alternative to traditional commercial pesticides. This potential as a pesticide can also provide tobacco farmers with another, more benign, use for their crops. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[92,64,26],"class_list":["post-1766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-products","tag-agriculture","tag-life-sciences","tag-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1766"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1769,"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1766\/revisions\/1769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}