SBIR-STTR Award

ISCA Technologies will optimize a novel, inexpensive biological method of fabrication of high value, difficult to synthesize from petroleum materials, pheromones which are of great importance in agricultural pest control. ISCA will further optimize its novel method of production of bio-based insect pheromones to develop new, inexpensive, pest management products for US crops based on resultant bio-based insect pheromones. This work allows for large-scale fermentation processes creating new possibilities for cheaper, greener, and more efficient production of insect pheromones: once we are done, we will be manufacturing our pheromones using the same production methods used to produce fermented products, like beer.

This project aims to revolutionize the production of synthetic insect pheromones to controlagricultural pests by using transgenic Camelina sativa plants to "grow" pheromone precursors.ISCA Technologies expects this innovation to eliminate the need for petroleum-based and otherlong hydrocarbon feedstocks and slash costs for pheromone synthesis making sustainableenvironmentally safe pheromone pest control tools economically feasible for a much wider arrayof crops. For decades pheromones have been proven to be effective controls for many of theworld's most damaging arthropod pests. These naturally occurring compounds can be used toprotect crops by manipulating pest behaviors such as by preventing them from mating repellingthem from crops or attracting them to traps or killing agents. Pheromones are nontoxic typicallyaffect only the targeted pest species leave no harmful residues on food produce cause little or noenvironmental pollution and are far less prone to pest resistance. Adoption of pheromones for pestmanagement however has been limited to high-value niche specialty crops because of the highcost of conventional pheromone synthesis: the price of active ingredients (AIs) of pheromonetypically range from $1000-3500 per kg resulting in field formulation prices well beyond theviable price range for growers of lower-value-per-acre row crops such as corn soybean wheatrice and cotton. The high costs pheromone controls stem from the complex organic chemistrysynthesis processes used to create them in which relatively expensive petroleum-based and plantoil chemicals are used as feedstock for the building-block hydrocarbon chains. These chemical-