Chemical ecology

Science programme: Biosecurity

Chemical ecology describes research and development involving chemical compounds associated with insect behaviour and plant response. Such compounds (Semiochemicals) can be secreted by insects (or other organisms including plants) for the purpose of information transfer.

Semiochemicals can be classed as:

• Pheromones – involved in intra-specific communication, e.g. sex pheromones, aggregation pheromones, alarm pheromones, and trail pheromones
• Allelochemicals - involved in inter-specific communication, e.g. kairomones and allomones.

Research to date has been driven by the need to provide control measures for pests important to the horticultural and agricultural industries. This has two aspects: development of control measures following incursions of international pests, and contributing to the international effort in insecticide risk reduction, e.g. organic and integrated fruit production (IFP) systems use traps and mating disruption.

The key objectives of research in this area are to:

• Develop new methods and products for control of insect pests that are compatible with environmentally-sustainable production systems and which also address biosecurity issues with invasive species
• Carry out discovery research on pheromone isolation, synthesis, and formulation
• Leverage our knowledge and capability to offer products and R&D services to commercial clients in NZ and overseas.

This is a very integrated research area with much cross-disciplinary work. The programmes have arisen from traditional crop protection and the more recent upsurge in biosecurity issues.  The science expertise required includes insect biology and ecology, insect behaviour and electrophysiology, analytical and synthetic chemistry, molecular biology, and the technology of product formulation and delivery systems.

Our competitive strengths are our depth of insect pest expertise, our pheromone discovery and identification research, and our basic receptor work.

HortResearch has the only substantial chemical ecology research group in Australasia.

Key equipment includes coupled GC-EAD, GC-MS, single sensillum recording, field electroantennogrammes, wind tunnel, olfactometers, field cages and laboratories.

Key collaborators include AgResearch, Crop & Food Research, Forest Research, Lincoln University, AgriQuality, University of Queensland, USDA, Penn State University, Natural Resources Institute, University of Hamburg and the Royal Swedish Institute of Chemistry.

Distribution of effort

Current research targets include native and introduced Lepidoptera and Coleoptera.

We have student projects, post-doctoral fellows, and encourage visitors to work on key projects of mutual interest.