WEBVTT

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I'm a bug lover, myself --

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not from childhood, by the way,

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but rather late.

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When I bachelored,

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majoring in zoology in Tel Aviv University,

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I kind of fell in love with bugs.

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And then, within zoology,

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I took the course or the discipline of entomology,

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the science of insects.

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And then I thought, myself, how can I be practical

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or help in the science of entomology?

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And then I moved to the world of plant protection --

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plant protection from insects,

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from bad bugs.

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And then within plant protection,

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I came into the discipline

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of biological pest control

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which we actually define

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as the use of living organisms

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to reduce populations

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of noxious plant pests.

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So it's a whole discipline in plant protection

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that's aiming at the reduction of chemicals.

NOTE Paragraph

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And biological pest control, by the way,

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or these good bugs that we are talking about,

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they've existed in the world for thousands and thousands of years,

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for a long, long time.

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But only in the last 120 years

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people started,

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or people knew more and more how to exploit, or how to use,

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this biological control phenomenon,

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or in fact, natural control phenomenon,

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to their own needs.

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Because biological control phenomenon,

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you can see it in your backyard.

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Just take a magnifying glass. You see what I have here?

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That's a magnifier times 10.

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Yeah, times 10.

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Just open it.

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You just twist leaves, and you see a whole new world

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of minute insects,

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or little spiders of one millimeter, one and a half,

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two millimeters long,

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and you can distinguish between the good ones and the bad ones.

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So this phenomenon of natural control

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exists literally everywhere.

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Here, in front of this building, I'm sure.

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Just have a look at the plants.

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So it's everywhere,

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and we need to know how to exploit it.

NOTE Paragraph

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Well let us go hand by hand

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and browse through just a few examples.

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What is a pest?

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What damage [does] it actually inflict on the plant?

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And what is the natural enemy,

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the biologically controlled agent,

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or the good bug, that we are talking about?

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In general, I'm going to talk

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about insects and spiders,

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or mites, let us call them.

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Insects, those six-legged organisms

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and spiders or mites,

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the eight-legged organisms.

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Let's have a look at that.

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Here is a pest, devastating pest, a spider mite,

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because it does a lot of webbing like a spider.

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You see the mother in between

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and two daughters, probably on the left and right,

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and a single egg on the right-hand side.

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And then you see what kind of damage it can inflict.

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On your right-hand side you can see a cucumber leaf,

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and on the middle, cotton leaf,

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and on the left a tomato leaf with these little stipplings.

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They can literally turn from green to white

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because of the sucking, piercing

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mouthparts

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of those spiders.

NOTE Paragraph

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But here comes nature

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that provides us with a good spider.

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This is a predatory mite -- just as small as a spider mite, by the way,

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one millimeter, two millimeters long, not more than that,

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running quickly, hunting,

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chasing the spider mites.

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And here you can see this lady in action

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on your left-hand side --

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just pierces, sucks

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the body fluids on the left-hand side of the pest mite.

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And after five minutes, this is what you see:

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just a typical dead corpse,

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shriveled, sucked-out,

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dead corpse of the spider mite,

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and next to it, two satiated individuals

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of predatory mites,

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a mother on the left-hand side,

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a young nymph on the right-hand side.

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By the way, a meal for them for 24 hours

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is about five individuals

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of the spider mites, of the bad mites,

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or 15 to 20 eggs

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of the pest mites.

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By the way, they are hungry always.

NOTE Paragraph

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(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

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And there is another example: aphids.

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By the way, it's springtime now in Israel.

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When temperature rises sharply,

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you can see those bad ones, those aphids, all over the plants,

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in your hibiscus, in your lantana,

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in the young, fresh foliage

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of the spring flush, so-called.

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By the way, with aphids you have only females,

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like Amazons.

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Females giving rise to females giving rise to other females.

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No males at all.

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Parthenogenesis, [as it] was so called.

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And they are very happy with that, apparently.

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Here we can see the damage.

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Those aphids secrete

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some sticky, sugary liquid

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called honeydew,

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and this just globs

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the upper parts of the plant.

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Here you see a typical cucumber leaf

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that turned actually from green to black

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because of a black fungus, sooty mold,

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which is covering it.

NOTE Paragraph

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And here comes the salvation

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through this parasitic wasp.

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Here we are not talking about a predator.

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Here we are talking a parasite --

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not a two-legged parasite,

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but an eight-legged parasite, of course.

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This is a parasitic wasp,

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again, two millimeters long, slender,

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a very quick

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and sharp flier.

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And here you can see this parasite in action,

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like in an acrobatic maneuver.

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She stands vis-a-vis

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in front of the victim at the right-hand side,

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bending its abdomen

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and inserting a single egg,

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a single egg into the body fluids

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of the aphid.

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By the way, the aphid tries to escape.

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She kicks and bites

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and secretes different liquids,

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but nothing will happen, in fact.

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Only the egg of the parasite

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will be inserted into the body fluids of the aphid.

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And after a few days, depending upon temperature,

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the egg will hatch

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and the larva of this parasite

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will eat the aphid from the inside.

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This is all natural. This is all natural.

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This is not fiction, nothing at all.

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Again, in your backyard,

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in your backyard.

NOTE Paragraph

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But this is the end result.

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This is the end result:

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Mummies --

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M-U-M-M-Y.

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This is the visual result of a dead aphid

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encompassing inside,

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in fact, a developing parasitoid

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that after a few minutes you see halfway out.

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The birth is almost complete.

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You can see, by the way, in different movies, etc.,

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it takes just a few minutes.

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And if this is a female, she'll immediately mate with a male

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and off she goes because time is very short.

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This female can live only three to four days,

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and she needs to give rise

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to around 400 eggs.

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That means she has 400 bad aphids

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to put her eggs

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into their body fluids.

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And this is of course not the end of it.

NOTE Paragraph

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There is a whole wealth of other natural enemies

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and this is just the last example.

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Again, we'll start first with the pest:

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the thrips.

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By the way, all these weird names --

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I didn't bother you with the Latin names of these creatures,

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okay, just the popular names.

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But this is a nice, slender,

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very bad pest.

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If you can see this, sweet peppers.

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This is not just an exotic, ornamental sweet pepper.

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This is a sweet pepper which is not consumable

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because it is suffering from a viral disease

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transmitted by those thrip adults.

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And here comes the natural enemy,

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minute pirate bug,

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"minute" because it is rather small.

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Here you can see the adult, black, and two young ones.

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And again, in action.

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This adult pierces the thrips,

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sucking it within just several minutes,

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just going to the other prey,

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continuing all over the place.

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And if we spread those minute pirate bugs, the good ones,

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for example, in a sweet pepper plot,

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they go to the flowers.

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And look, this flower is flooded

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with predatory bugs, with the good ones

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after wiping out the bad ones, the thrips.

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So this is a very positive situation, by the way.

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No harm to the developing fruit. No harm to the fruit set.

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Everything is just fine under these circumstances.

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But again, the question is,

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here you saw them on a one-to-one basis --

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the pest, the natural enemy.

NOTE Paragraph

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What we do is actually this.

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In Northeast Israel,

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in Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu,

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there is a facility

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that mass-produces those natural enemies.

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In other words, what we do there,

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we amplify,

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we amplify the natural control,

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or the biological control phenomenon.

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And in 30,000 square meters

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of state-of-the-art greenhouses,

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there, we are mass-producing those predatory mites,

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those minute pirate bugs,

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those parasitic wasps, etc., etc.

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Many different parts.

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By the way, they have a very nice landscape --

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you see the Jordanian Mountains on the one hand

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and the Jordan Valley on the other hand,

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and a good, mild winter

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and a nice, hot summer,

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which is an excellent condition

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to mass-produce those creatures.

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And by the way, mass-production --

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it is not genetic manipulation.

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There are no GMOs --

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Genetically Modified Organisms -- whatsoever.

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We take them from nature,

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and the only thing that we do,

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we give them the optimal conditions,

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under the greenhouses or in the climate rooms,

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in order to proliferate,

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multiply and reproduce.

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And that's what we get, in fact.

NOTE Paragraph

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You see under a microscope.

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You see in the upper left corner, you see a single predatory mite.

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And this is the whole bunch of predatory mites.

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You see this ampoule. You see this one.

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I have one gram of those predatory mites.

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One gram's 80,000 individuals,

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80,000 individuals

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are good enough

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to control one acre, 4,000 square meters,

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of a strawberry plot

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against spider mites for the whole season

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of almost one year.

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And we can produce from this, believe you me,

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several dozens of kilograms

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on an annual basis.

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So this is what I call

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amplification of the phenomenon.

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And no, we do not disrupt the balance.

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On the contrary,

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because we bring it to every cultural plot

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where the balance was already disrupted

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by the chemicals.

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Here we come with those natural enemies

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in order to reverse a little bit of the wheel

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and to bring more natural balance

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to the agricultural plot by reducing those chemicals.

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That's the whole idea.

NOTE Paragraph

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And what is the impact?

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In this table, you can actually see what is an impact

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of a successful biological control

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by good bugs.

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For example, in Israel,

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where we employ

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more than 1,000 hectares --

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10,000 dunams in Israeli terms --

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of biological pest controlling sweet pepper

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under protection,

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75 percent of the pesticides

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were actually reduced.

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And Israeli strawberries, even more --

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80 percent of the pesticides,

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especially those aimed against pest mites in strawberries.

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So the impact is very strong.

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And there goes the question,

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especially if you ask growers, agriculturists:

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Why biological control?

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Why good bugs?

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By the way, the number of answers you get

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equals the number of people you ask.

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But if we go, for example, to this place,

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Southeast Israel,

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the Arava area above the Great Rift Valley,

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where the really top-notch --

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the pearl of the Israeli agriculture

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is located,

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especially under greenhouse conditions, or under screenhouse conditions --

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if you drive all the way to Eilat, you see this

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just in the middle of the desert.

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And if you zoom in,

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you can definitely watch this,

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grandparents with their grandchildren,

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distributing the natural enemies, the good bugs,

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instead of wearing special clothes

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and gas masks and applying chemicals.

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So safety, with respect to the application,

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this is the number one answer that we get from growers,

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why biological control.

NOTE Paragraph

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Number two, many growers

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are in fact petrified

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from the idea of resistance,

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that the pests will become resistant

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to the chemicals,

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just in our case that bacteria

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becomes resistant to antibiotics.

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It's the same, and it can happen very quickly.

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Fortunately, in either biological control

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or even natural control,

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resistance is extremely rare.

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It hardly happens.

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Because this is evolution,

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this is the natural ratio,

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unlike resistance,

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which happens in the case of chemicals.

NOTE Paragraph

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And thirdly, public demand.

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Public demand -- the more the public

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demands the reduction of chemicals,

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the more growers become aware of the fact

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they should, wherever they can and wherever possible,

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replace the chemical control

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with biological control.

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Even here, there is another grower,

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you see, very interested in the bugs,

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the bad ones and the good ones,

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wearing this magnifier already on her head,

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just walking safely

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in her crop.

NOTE Paragraph

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Finally, I want to get actually to my vision,

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or in fact, to my dream.

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Because, you see, this is the reality.

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Have a look at the gap.

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If we take the overall turnover

00:13:43.000 --> 00:13:45.000
of the biocontrol industry worldwide,

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it's 250 million dollars.

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And look at the overall pesticide industry

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in all the crops throughout the world.

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I think it's times 100 or something like that.

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Twenty-five billion.

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So there is a huge gap to bridge.

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So actually, how can we do it?

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How can we bridge, or let's say, narrow, this gap

00:14:07.000 --> 00:14:09.000
in the course of the years?

00:14:09.000 --> 00:14:12.000
First of all, we need to find more robust,

00:14:12.000 --> 00:14:15.000
good and reliable biological solutions,

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more good bugs

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that we can either mass-produce

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or actually conserve in the field.

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Secondly, to create even more

00:14:25.000 --> 00:14:27.000
intensive and strict public demand

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to reduction of chemicals

00:14:29.000 --> 00:14:32.000
in the agricultural fresh produce.

00:14:32.000 --> 00:14:35.000
And thirdly, also to increase awareness by the growers

00:14:35.000 --> 00:14:38.000
to the potential of this industry.

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And this gap really narrows.

00:14:40.000 --> 00:14:43.000
Step by step, it does narrow.

NOTE Paragraph

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So I think my last slide is:

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All we are saying, we can actually sing it:

00:14:49.000 --> 00:14:51.000
Give nature a chance.

00:14:51.000 --> 00:14:53.000
So I'm saying it on behalf of all the biocontrol

00:14:53.000 --> 00:14:55.000
petitioners and implementers,

00:14:55.000 --> 00:14:57.000
in Israel and abroad,

00:14:57.000 --> 00:14:59.000
really give nature a chance.

NOTE Paragraph

00:14:59.000 --> 00:15:01.000
Thank you.

NOTE Paragraph

00:15:01.000 --> 00:15:03.000
(Applause)