Dr. Justin Pahara and his colleagues at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Lethbridge Research and Development Center are developing innovative new screening techniques. Their creditable initiative aims to improve crop protection against pests by protecting pollinators and other beneficial insects. These approaches assess the efficacy of current crop protection strategies against destructive pest pressures. They work to avoid or minimize adverse effects on species that are actually helpful to us. As of 2024, the Canadian agriculture and agri-food sector accounted for more than $142 billion. This underscores the critical need for better pest management tools.
Dr. Pahara’s cutting-edge research aims to develop highly specific controls for crop-munching pests like cutworms and lygus bugs. Using these sophisticated techniques, he and his colleagues created a predictive test that’s proven its effectiveness. This development is a pest management game changer. Most importantly, it allows us to more accurately target harmful insects, while protecting important beneficial ones.
Innovative Screening Methods
The long-term goal of Dr. Pahara’s research is to create more effective and environmentally friendly crop protection solutions. To get a better understanding of how pesticides enter pest bodies, his team is working to refine their delivery mechanisms to better accommodate these treatments. Their recent confirmation of success for their screening test now opens the door to much more reliable evaluation of existing crop treatments.
Weed control is a new front in Dr. Pahara’s research, but he has already begun expanding his efforts against this category of pests as well. This shift significantly increases the complexity of pest management. Learning how multiple pests respond to a crop treatment can be key. With this information, we can identify strategies that avert pest/opposing plant invasions and best protect crops without disrupting the ecosystem.
Using the CANMRS funded BioXAS beamline at the Canadian Light Source (CLS), Dr. Pahara was able to take high-resolution X-ray images. He homed in on cutworms and lygus bugs in particular. This non-invasive imaging technology revealed mineral-rich deposits in lygus bugs for the first time. These regions are important for harboring ULK proteins. Such intelligence is critical to developing the kinds of treatments that can battle these pests directly.
Expanding Research Horizons
Join us as Dr. Pahara dives into his fascinating, ongoing research. Under Risk Assessment & Management Program, he’ll start testing the delivery of newly developed nanomaterials by AAFC in conjunction with NANO division of National Research Council of Canada. This creative method prevents the incorporation of these materials straight into insect bodies. It presents a new, important, and potentially more effective way to do pest control.
The emphasis on nanotechnology would be a big step forward in using pest management strategies. By concentrating on “bad” bugs while sparing beneficial insects, Dr. Pahara’s work promises to revolutionize how farmers approach pest control. The impacts of this research go far beyond just increasing crop yields—it’s continuing to grow a healthier agricultural ecosystem.
Dr. Pahara’s findings and methods have been documented in the Canadian Journal of Chemistry (DOI: 10.1139/cjc-2024-0246), contributing to the growing body of knowledge surrounding nanotechnology applications in agriculture.
Implications for Canadian Agriculture
The long-term benefits of Dr. Pahara’s research on the Canadian agriculture industry would be significant. With an increasing demand for sustainable farming practices, his work stands to provide farmers with new tools that align with environmental stewardship goals.
This study advances the development of a next-generation crop treatment that zeroes in on the pests that do the most harm. Consequently, farmers are able to use more efficient practices and reduce their usage of broad-spectrum pesticides. These improvements are needed when farmers are increasingly challenged by the threat of pest resistance and stricter environmental regulations.