Insects

Artificial Intelligence Joins The Fight Against Weeds, Insects And Disease

Fri, 08 Aug 2025 13:53:42 GMT

The crop protection industry needs a reboot, according to Tony Klemm.

As CEO of Enko, a crop-protection startup, he says the company is taking a different approach to solving one of agriculture’s biggest problems – developing safe, effective and sustainable crop protection products that can be brought to the marketplace faster and more economically.

Traditional discovery pipelines for herbicides, fungicides, insecticides are not keeping pace with real challenges farmers face, such as resistance issues, he told Chip Flory, host of AgriTalk on Thursday.

A 2024 study funded by Crop Life International reports the costs associated with bringing a new active ingredient to major U.S. and European markets now top $300 million. In addition, the survey says the average lead time between the first synthesis of a new crop protection molecule and its subsequent commercial introduction is now over 12 years.

Part of the long development time required is related to regulatory hurdles. “There’s just increasing demand for meeting environmental safety needs, rightfully so,” Klemm says.

A Paradigm Shift
Enko, based in Mystic, Conn., is using artificial intelligence (AI) and a machine learning discovery platform to guide the company’s research and development efforts. Klemm describes the strategy as a paradigm shift from the current industry practices for how small molecule crop protection discovery has been done.

“We use DNA-encoded libraries, and these libraries allow our scientists to explore this massive, diverse chemical space in a very targeted, automated and expansive way,” he says.

The technology allows Enko scientists to look at billions of molecules and screen them for safety and efficacy and, in the process, develop them faster and more economically.

“We still have to take the regulatory journey that, right now, no one’s figured out a way to expedite,” he notes. “But getting to that regulatory queue faster and better on the front side is really what’s bringing us that cost savings, that efficacy and is going to allow for more products to be put into the regulatory queue in a faster manner.”

Progress To Date
So far, Klemm says Enko has delivered about 50 active programs that cover all facets of weeds, insects and disease. Many use novel or new modes of action that Klemm believes will help farmers fight resistance issues, such as herbicide resistance in Palmer amaranth and pigweed.

“We’re really working on how we can bring new modes of action to farmers, give them fresh tools to win that fight. And our chemistries work using fewer active ingredients, from perspective of the load on the acre, so we’re designing safer chemistry for the future,” he says.

Specifically, Klemm says Enko recently announced a new grass herbicide is in the pipeline for the European cereals market for control of black grass. The company also has conducted field trials for corn and soybean products in the U.S. that he anticipates are five to 10 years away from market launch, depending on how long they take to move through regulatory channels.

Your next read: Bayer Affirms Support of Glyphosate, Optimistic for a Future with Over the Top Dicamba Labels

Want to curb climate change? Buy less-than-perfect produce and go easy on pesticides, researchers say

Wed, 08 Mar 2023 23:04:51 GMT

Year after year, a steady rise of extreme weather events causes farmers, distributors and food retailers to scramble to deliver food from farm to grocery aisle. Meanwhile, growers and produce industry leaders grapple with how to sustainably grow food in the face of a changing climate.

The drum beat of climate change is becoming harder to ignore.

Global food systems account for about one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions. While many climate-smart agriculture methods focus on conservation tillage and regenerative soil health practices, the Pesticide Action Network believes that no-till solutions alone do not solve agriculture’s emissions problem.

“The overwhelming majority of pesticides are derived from petroleum, meaning they’re ultimately derived from fossil fuels, and we refer to them as petrochemicals,” Asha Sharma, PAN North America’s organizing co-director and report co-author, told The Packer.

Related news: California’s sustainable pesticide road map: What it is and why it matters

In a recent report, “Pesticides and Climate Change: A Vicious Cycle,” the international coalition makes the case that reducing use of fossil fuel-derived, synthetic pesticides is a critical piece to the puzzle to mitigate climate change with agricultural practices.

The case to include pesticide reduction in climate solutions

In the analysis, PAN lays out its case that reliance on synthetic pesticides contributes to greenhouse gas emissions and, compounding the issue, also makes existing farming and ranching systems more vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

It’s a negative feedback loop, or “vicious cycle,” that will only worsen unless farmers and ranchers make changes to how they grow food, according to the recent PAN report.

What can the fresh produce industry do in the face of this problem? PAN suggests the solution is twofold. First, the produce industry needs to embrace less-than-perfect fruits and vegetables from growers. Second, growers need to embrace agroecological farming methods and lessen dependence on synthetic pesticides.

Shifting beauty standards in fruits and vegetables

“The power of procurement is huge,” Sharma said.

If produce buyers rewarded farmers for quality products, while shifting expectations around what is and is not a quality marker when it comes to judging fruits and vegetables, it would completely change the game, according to the PAN report’s co-authors.

This shift in what’s acceptable would empower growers to ease up on applying synthetic pesticides that promise blemish-free fruits and vegetables.

“One of the driving factors behind the continued use of pesticide is the perception that that the use of pesticides will guarantee that you’ve got beautiful fruits and vegetables,” Margaret Reeves, Ph.D., and senior scientist and report co-author at PAN North America, told The Packer.

There’s intense pressure from the market to have beautiful, perfect products, even though appearance doesn’t say much about quality of the product, she added.

“The market could have a powerful message and influence in shifting the consumers mentality about what’s acceptable,” Reeves continued. “The produce industry could go a long way in shifting that consumer mentality about what’s acceptable.”

Allowing blemishes and tolerating a small amount of visible pest pressure on sought-after fruits and vegetables would dramatically lessen agricultural dependence on synthetic pesticides.

“There are rigorous standards that farmers have to abide by when it comes to quality, appearance and quantity, usually under contracts,” Sharma said. “Being able to work with farmers who are farming organically or with agroecological practices, [buyers must] make sure standards aren’t leaving folks out.”

Reducing pests through ecological farming practices

On the other side of the coin, breaking out of the pesticide dependence cycle for growers looks like embracing new farming practices that focus on preventing pests instead of eradicating them, according to PAN’s recent report.

“Solutions like agroecology focus on changing our whole philosophy and system of farming, working with nature rather than against it and minimizing the use of synthetic inputs that include pesticides and fertilizers,” Sharma said.

The agroecological approach is an ecosystem-based approach where the emphasis is on crop and system health and preventing conditions conducive to pest problems, Reeves said.

What’s more, these farming techniques rely on integrated pest management strategies, systems-based approaches and ecological principles that minimize the use of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers.

“That’s why diversity is so important in crop rotations,” Reeves said. “It’s not completely outside of what many producers consider, but this approach makes the agricultural system one that is healthy, vigorous, abundant. It prevents pest problems rather than waiting until the pests are there and then asking, ‘How do you kill them with pesticides or other technologies?’”

Finding natural solutions through trial and error

Rob Faux, an Iowa farmer and PAN’s communications manager, has had success farming using agroecological growing methods firsthand.

“We keep learning, and we keep adjusting year after year. We just keep getting better at it,” Faux told The Packer. “There are two principles in agroecology that we very much adhere to, and that’s embracing complexity and encouraging diversity.”

For Faux, complexity means not just farming with a systems-based approach, but also incorporating more types of plants in his crop rotation. For instance, to combat the Colorado potato beetle on his farm, Faux added diversity into his potato fields, alternating green beans and bush beans next to the potato fields.

“That, of course, means that you’re managing a system that is a little more complex,” he said. “With lots of trial and error and a few studies, we figured out what works on our farm. Now, we don’t worry about the Colorado potato beetle most of the time.”

How the produce industry can support agroecological farming

To support farmers who are using agroecological growing practices, Faux urges produce buyers to seek out more small, diversified farms.

“To make this work we must have the buyers willing to accept a little bit of the burden of the complexity. Not all of it, but some of it,” he said.

While not as simple as purchasing from one big supplier that grows or sources vast quantities of one product, Faux believes supporting smaller growers who can rotate fields and grow several types of crops is part of solving the larger issue of mitigating climate change in agriculture.

Not only does agroecology lessen farmers’ need to apply synthetic pesticides, according to PAN’s report authors, it also centers decision-making with the farmer, who can tackle pest problems directly with boots on the ground.

“Importantly, the aspect of agroecology that doesn’t exist in solutions like precision agriculture is centering the decision-making power of the people most impacted by conventional or industrial agriculture,” Sharma said. “The farmers, farmworkers, indigenous people, rural communities, and really trying to build their decision-making power in forming the types of agricultural systems that we really want to see.”

Read the full report, “Pesticides and Climate Change: A Vicious Cycle.”

Why a New App Designed by Iowa State Could Be a Game Changer to Identify and Diagnose Unwanted Pests

Fri, 03 Feb 2023 02:09:49 GMT

In fields across Iowa, unwanted pests are on the prowl year after year, but a new app could help farmers not only detect which pests are in their field, but also give insights on how to treat the field if it’s a yield-robbing pest.

“It is the first of its kind in the sense we are trying to cater the needs of farmer by putting these management practices or strategies linked with insect detection,” says Arti Singh, assistant professor in Department of Agronomy at Iowa State University.

The main goal is to make pest management simpler, which is why the app is a one-stop shop that first identifies the pest, but also gives management advice by recommending on next steps.

“They go into a field, they take a picture, and in real time, it tells them which insect it is, whether it’s a beneficial insect or if it’s a harmful insect,” she adds. “It also gives them the scientific name and common name of the insect.”

The app is already able to identify 2,000 different insects today, but by early next year, it will have the capability detecting and diagnosing more than 4,000 pests. The growth of the app’s capability is being driven by the power of artificial intelligence.

“We use a concept called deep learning, which is the subset of artificial intelligence, where we collect these images, and we pass it through a network, if you will, and the network is essentially extracting all different kinds of features of this of the images and then making a decision on which insect class it belongs to,” says Baskar Ganapathysubramanian, professor associate chair for Research Mechanical Engineering, Iowa State University.

In order to double the amount of insects it can detect by early next year, millions of images will need to be collected, a process that’s already underway.

“I think the large amount of data that we have been collecting, both from sensors, from images, from drones and from citizen scientists, has provided a wonderful opportunity for us to train new kinds of artificial intelligence models on this data so that we can facilitate decision support and enable farmers to do what they do better, faster and easier way,” says Ganapathysubramanian.

While creating a pest identification has a goal of simplicity for the end user, the data on the front end can be noisy.

“Different people use different kinds of cameras, different people use different kinds of phones, at different locations in different resolutions,” says Ganapathysubramanian. “So, how do you account for all those things while you design insect detection app is something that we have to deal with.”

Another challenge is the sheer amount of data that the app will need to process. Ganapathysubramanian says some pests will have more than 100,000 images, while other insects may only have 20 photos, and many of those pests have similar characteristics.

“There are also some beetles that looks very, very similar, but they actually belong to different class, so how do you distinguish between two similar looking images, but they actually belong to wildly different classes where one class could be a beneficial pest insect and the other class could be actually a pest, or perhaps an invasive species.”

While artificial intelligence is key, the human element is still a vital piece of the puzzle. However, the sheer amount of data creates a challenge with sorting through all the data.

“You have lot of images, it takes an entomologist, actually to decide what it each individual image, which class it belongs to, but if we have 20 million images like these, it’s difficult for an entomologist to go and look at and rank and read each individual image,” explains Ganapathysubramanian.

The app will help farmers solve pest problems not only today, but also tomorrow, as deep learning continues to evolve with the pests and diseases farmers face.

“We don’t know about these new crops which insect pests or diseases can be a problem, says Singh. “If we have this library of insect pests, and we can use the smartphone app to identify in a timely way and mitigate, I think this will be a game changer for farmers.”

While the app is off to a strong start, the researchers say their work is far from over, as the technology could soon harvest solutions across the U.S. And the researchers say it’s because artificial intelligence, data science and the large amount of data that they’re collecting, are coming together to provide real-time insight and solutions for farmers.

Medfly quarantine successful in Los Angeles County

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 05:30:58 GMT

Local, state and federal agricultural entities have lifted a Mediterranean fruit fly quarantine in northern Los Angeles County.

The 129-square-mile zone in the Sun Valley neighborhood in the county was enacted Aug. 30 last year. A total of 142 flies and “well over 100” larvae were found, which indicates there was a breeding colony in the quarantine zone, according to a July 3 news release from the California Department of Food and Agriculture. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and the Los Angeles County Agricultural Commissioner’s Office were also monitoring the situation.

“Detecting and eradicating invasive, exotic pest infestations is an important way to protect our food supply and our environment,” CDFA Secretary Karen Ross said in the release. “Our response to Medfly infestations has evolved and improved over the years to the point where we have developed environmentally friendly techniques that allow us to respond quickly, confidently and effectively.”

The eradication program included the release of at least 500,000 sterile fruit flies every week for every square mile in the quarantine area. Authorities also used an organic pesticide and removed all fruit from trees in a 100-meter radius of breeding populations, according to the release.

Unspoken Truths About Pests: Japanese Beetles

Tue, 13 Sep 2022 15:56:08 GMT

These pests have colossal appetites but don’t tend to pack an economic punch

Social, mobile and voracious, Japanese beetles can crowd into your corn or soybean fields for a two-month party. Their damage is often just cosmetic, but it’s important to understand the timing of when they choose to defoliate soybeans or clip corn silks.

SMALL BUG, BIG BUFFET

Japanese beetle adults are ½" in length and metallic green in color with bronze- or copper-colored wing covers. If you look closely, you’ll see 12 white tufts of hair or bristles on the edge of their shells (five on each side and two on the back end).

(Farm Journal)

“Adult Japanese beetles have an unusually broad host range; they will feed on over 300 plant species,” says Kelley Tilmon, Ohio State University Extension entomologist. “When they first reach an area, they are usually noticed in horticultural and garden settings long before they become agricultural pests.”

Japanese beetles have a one-year life cycle. The larva overwinters deep in the soil and completes its growth the next spring. The adult emerges from the ground in midsummer and can be found in late June through September.

“The adults generally live 60 days during the summer,” says Ashley Dean, Iowa State University Extension specialist for field crop entomology. “They alternate between feeding, mating and laying eggs during those 60 days.”

CLIPPED SILKS, LACY LEAVES

In corn, Japanese beetles clip off silks, but as long as they don’t infest before pollination, they tend to not cause economic damage, Dean says.

(Farm Journal)

For soybeans, adult Japanese beetles feed on the leaves, leaving a lacy appearance. The feeding damage often looks worse than it really is because it is concentrated in the top of the plant, Tilmon says.

“That’s why you need to assess the plants as a whole and the field as a whole,” she says.

Once you assess defoliation, and if the beetles are still present, you can choose from several insecticide options for corn or soybeans. But in general,

Tilmon says, entomologists recommend a conservative approach to management.

(Farm Journal)

Sara Schafer uses her Missouri farm roots to cover crop management, business topics, farmland and more.

Robot Bees? Check Out This New Pollination Innovation

Mon, 27 Jan 2025 18:56:44 GMT

Scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed advanced robotic insects that could aid farming through artificial pollination. They could prove especially useful in the controlled indoor environments of high-tech ‘vertical farms’.

“These type of robots will open up a very new type of use case,” co-lead author Suhan Kim, from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), told Reuters.

“For instance, we can think of artificial pollination. So since our robot looks like an insect, and it’s real lightweight and small, if you can really precisely control the robot we might be able to do something on top of flowers or leaves, which really requires very delicate interactions.”

The robots, each lighter than a paperclip, can hover for approximately 1,000 seconds, over 100 times longer than previous models. They are also capable of performing high-speed acrobatic maneuvers, including double aerial flips.

The new design halves the size of the team’s earlier model, with increased stability while also freeing up space for electronics.

“We want the robot to be able to have a [circuit] board, battery and the sensors on board. So to do that, we need much higher payload than now. So what we’re currently pushing very hard right now is to optimize the robot design to be able to lift more and more so that we can afford these potential payloads,” said Kim.

Long term, the team hope this will enable autonomous flight outside the lab. This technology could significantly boost crop yields in multi-level warehouses by providing a more efficient method for artificial pollination.

Vertical farming, the name given to the production of crops in a series of stacked levels, often in a controlled environment, is a fast-growing industry with billions of dollars being pumped into projects across the globe.

It is seen as part of the solution to the food security challenge posed by population expansion at a time when climate change and geopolitics threaten supply.

“This doesn’t really mean that we want to entirely replace honeybees in nature, but what we sometimes hear from the people in the relevant field is that there are really good cases where we can’t rely on honeybees anymore, such as like indoor farming, where we can’t really have honeybee homes in it because of safety issues or some environmental issues. So in that case, we can start thinking of using our robot, if it works well, for tools like indoor farming,” added Kim.

Despite the team’s improvements, the robotic insects still cannot match the capabilities of natural pollinators. However, the researchers aim to improve the robots’ flight time and precision to enable them to land and take off from the center of a flower.

The research was published in the journal Science Robotics.