Biosensor for volatiles released by damaged plants

Design of Polymer Carriers for Optimized Pheromone Release in Sustainable Insect Control Strategies

Semiochemicals such as pheromones play a major role in communication between insects, influencing their spatial orientation, aggregation, defense, and mating. The rational chemical design of precision pheromone-releasing materials are increased the efficiency of pheromone-based plant protection agents. Decades of research is begun to unravel the complex communication structures regulated by semiochemicals, from the neuronal perception of specific chemical substances to the behavioral responses in hundreds of species, including many devastating pest insects. This article summarizes the most effective uses of semiochemicals in agriculture, the behavioral responses of selected target species, and controlled-release strategies based on formulations such as novel fibrous polymer carriers. This study helps scientists, decision-makers, farmers, and the public understand the importance of appropriate mating disruption techniques that reduce the need for broad-spectrum insecticides and limit their impact on non-target and beneficial insects.

Biosensors for Odor Detection: A Review

Animals can easily detect hundreds of thousands of odors in the environment with high sensitivity and selectivity. With the progress of biological olfactory research, scientists have extracted multiple biomaterials and integrated them with different transducers thus generating numerous biosensors. Those biosensors inherit the sensing ability of living organisms and present excellent detection performance. In this paper, we mainly introduce odor biosensors based on substances from animal olfactory systems. Several instances of organ/tissue-based, cell-based, and protein-based biosensors are described and compared. Furthermore, we list some other biological materials such as peptide, nanovesicle, enzyme, and aptamer that are also utilized in odor biosensors. In addition, we illustrate the further developments of odor biosensors.

A portable gas chromatograph with simultaneous detection by mass spectrometry and electroantennography for the highly sensitive in situ measurement of volatiles

Mating disruption is a sustainable method for the control of insect pests, involving the release of synthetic sex pheromones that disrupt the olfactory localization of females by males. However, the development and refinement of this strategy is hampered because current instruments lack the sensitivity to detect volatile organic chemicals in the field, and portable electroantennograms produce non-comparable relative units and distorted results in the presence of plant volatiles. To address the demand for more sensitive instruments that are suitable for the rapid in situ detection of airborne pheromones, we have developed a portable, automated needle trap device connected to a gas chromatograph, mass spectrometer, and electroantennographic detector (NTD-GC-MS/EAD) suitable for field applications. We tested the instrument by measuring the concentration of the sex pheromone (E,Z)-7,9-dodecadienyl acetate, which is used to disrupt the mating of the European grapevine moth Lobesia botrana (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae). Our data confirm that the instrument generates highly reproducible results and is highly sensitive, with a detection threshold of 3 ng/m(3) (E,Z)-7,9-dodecadienyl acetate in outside air.

Induced plant volatiles allow sensitive monitoring of plant health status in greenhouses

A novel approach to support the inspection of greenhouse crops is based on the measurement of volatile organic compounds emitted by unhealthy plants. This approach has attracted some serious interest over the last decade. In pursuit of this interest, we performed several experiments at the laboratory-scale to pinpoint marker volatiles that can be used to indicate certain health problems. In addition to these laboratory experiments, pilot and model studies were performed in order to verify the validity of these marker volatiles under real-world conditions. This paper provides an overview of results and gives an outlook on the use of plant volatiles for plant health monitoring.

Headspace solid-phase microextraction--comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography of wound induced plant volatile organic compound emissions

Plant emissions of volatile organic compounds from mechanically wounded Agrostis stolonifera, Pennisetum clandestinum, Eucalyptus leucoxylon and Trifolium repens have been sampled by headspace-solid phase microextraction (HS-SPME) and analysed by using comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography (GCxGC) for measurement of the plant emissions. GCxGC produces a fingerprint of the volatile organic compounds in a 2D separation space that may be approximately interpreted as a boiling point-polarity space, and may then be presented as a two-dimensional contour plot. This allows identification of sample-dependent variations in component distributions in the 2D plot, which will contain information about plant differences and should therefore facilitate recognition of different plant materials and displays the gross differences in volatiles between each plant species.

Insect-based BioFETs with improved signal characteristics

Insect-based BioFETs (biologically sensitive field-effect transistors) with improved signal characteristics have been developed. These BioFETs require a specifically adapted signal interfacing between a FET as signal transducer and an intact insect antenna as biocomponent. Therefore, different field-effect transistors have been fabricated in order to study the signal transfer at the bioelectronic interface. As relevant features of the BioFET, its current-voltage characteristics, the transconductance and the signal-to-noise ratio have been investigated as affected by the choice of gate insulator materials and gate dimensions (width-to-length ratio, thickness of the dielectric layers). The performance of the improved FET arrangement in the isolated-antenna BioFET was validated by employing dilution series of the plant odour component Z-3-hexen-1-ol.

Bioelectronic noses: a status report. Part II

The present state of the art to record or to mimic electronically the human senses of olfaction and taste is characterized. In this part II, strategies are outlined to utilize chemical and biological structures with their different complexities which serve as sensor elements in (bio-) electronic noses. Finally a survey is given on the computer-science aspects of odor recognition based on these elements.