This seems to fall under a Permie way of insect control

ARS News Service

A New Technology for Environmentally Safe Pest Control Discovered Inside Insect Cells

For media inquiries contact: Janice López-Muñoz, (301) 793-7007

August 27, 2021

If you feel you are in a continuous search to have a fire ant free home lawn, you are not alone. These invasive and common insect pests are difficult to control and come back as uninvited guests over and over.

The good news is that USDA's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists, recently discovered a new technology that is safer than pesticides to control fire ants and keep them away. The technology, known as "receptor interference" (RECEPTOR-i), disrupts the vital processes (e.g. feeding, digestion, and development) needed for fire ants to survive, resulting in a natural biological control strategy.

"The concept and procedure for RECEPTOR-i has been developed over years," said Man-Yeon Choi, Research Entomologist at the ARS Horticultural Crops Research Laboratory in Corvallis, OR. "Now it is a proven technology that will serve as a model for other pest management strategies such as for spotted wing drosophila, thrips and pest slugs."

The research published by Biomolecules, establishes how RECEPTOR-i technology uses the fire ants own cell components to target and screen for the small proteins needed to disrupt the insect's vital processes resulting in negative effects on their survival. Using the insects own cells is key to the success of RECEPTOR-i, since those small proteins can be obtained within 2-3 weeks versus other pest control strategy approaches that take longer and are more expensive.

"The RECEPTOR-i active ingredients are biodegradable, having no environmental impact and since it is species specific, it is not expected to affect other insects," said Robert Vander Meer, Research Leader at the ARS Imported Fire Ant and Household Insects Research Laboratory in Gainesville, FL. "This technology is broadly applicable to animal pests and the speed of discovery makes it ideal for developing a rapid control response to new invasive insects."

The use of this natural pest control technology will depend on the target insect. In the case of fire ants, it will be put together in a sucrose solution and presented for feeding in a bait station. For other pest insects the application of this technology will depend on the target insect's feeding type, e.g., chewing, caterpillars, piercing or sucking, mosquitoes and crop pest insects.

Fire ant control costs American households billions of dollars every year, hence developing effective and safer pest control strategies will be a great benefit to families and other economic sectors affected by fire ants. More research will take place for field experiments that will provide the data needed to stimulate commercial interest and get this technology to homeowners and others needing fire ant control.

It sounds handy and potentially benign. As for "Permie", I guess that depends on your definition, but it certainly could be worked into a Permaculture design if it is, indeed, specific to only fire ants and not too environmentally destructive to produce.

I'd hate to be in the position of dealing with fire ants! Sounds awful!

Good  luck!

Hmmm. I took the time to look up what the researcher has published about this approach.  To my understanding, this is still another insecticide approach. A chemical (biochemical or not) that disrupts the living process of an organisms cells. Since that is how most chemical pesticides already work (and sadly, it's also how they affect non-target species like us), it makes me cautious.  Making the process species specific, with special and what will be a product that pest-control companies will encourage people spend millions on... Isn't this is the typical approach of how chemical companies pay researchers to discover and create, and then the company markets and encourages people to use a new, profitable biocide?

We are certainly free to use tools in permaculture, and I understand how frustrating ants can be.  But I'm not sure this soon to be patented "Receptor-i" (which he said is short for "receptor-interferer") is a tool I'd want in my toolbox.

I would describe a permaculture way of dealing with a pest issue as a whole-system approach that recognizes that a perceived pest is an indicator of a different core issue.  Like aphids all over one specific apple tree could mean that tree was over-fertilized.  Like explained in this video below by Stefan Sobkowiak, "Aphids are great indicators of". And in this case, like so many, the adage "The problem is the solution" applies. The aphids are ridding the plant of the nitrogen he accidentally oversupplied.



Since the article about the novel biocide approach is discussing ants, here's another video with a permaculture view of ants:  



And there is even a biological approach for fire ants already in existence, here's a quote from the wikipedia page on fire ants:

A number of entomopathogenic fungi are also natural enemies of fire ants, such as Beauveria bassiana[47] and Metarhizium anisopliae[48]. The latter is commercially available for the biological control (as an alternative to conventional pesticides) of various pest insects, and a new proposed technology has increased its shelf life and efficiency against fire ants.[49]

I wish researchers would have more capacity to view things in a whole systems way, but that is not the mindset, and it also doesn't make for a greatly profitable product.

With the description they provided "ire ants own cell components to target and screen for the small proteins" tells me there is no chemicals but the ants own body is used to develop the ingredients.