Supporting Work to Use Spider Toxins for Crop Safeguarding

The EcoStack project aims to develop and support ecologically, economically and socially sustainable crop production, by developing new resources to support agricultural biodiversity and existing ecosystem services.

Working alongside Newcastle University, CPI will provide expertise in fermentation and downstream processing development focused on the production and formulation of biopesticides, based on natural toxins found in arthropod species, including those from spiders and insects.

Many current chemical pesticides, such as neonicotinoids, are under increasing regulatory scrutiny due to the damaging environmental effects they can cause. However, the use of natural biopesticides offers a more sustainable approach to crop protection by reducing chemical inputs.

Certain species of spiders and parasitic wasps, which play an important role in bio-control of crop pests, produce venoms that are toxic to a range of insect pests while being non-harmful to humans and other mammals.

These compounds are potent toxins when injected into pest insects by the spider, or wasp, however, when orally ingested, this toxicity is not observed as the toxin cannot pass through the lining of the gut to their target site of action.

To address this, researchers at Newcastle University have combined these toxins with naturally occurring proteins, such as a lectin from the common snowdrop plant, which acts as a ​‘carrier’, allowing them to pass through an insect’s gut and kill the pest.

Collaborating with the university, specialists at CPI will produce these proteins at pilot scale via a yeast expression system. 

The proteins will then be isolated and formulated to provide a substantial resource for the agricultural field trials of the new biopesticide, which are set to begin in 2021.

The products created through this five-year international initiative, which is funded under the EU Research and Innovation Horizon 2020 initiative and consists of 24 partner organisations, will be less harmful and less costly, delivering benefits for farmers, biodiversity, and wider society.

“Having the opportunity to collaborate with subject matter experts from across Europe excites us, and we thoroughly look forward to using our expertise to add value to such an ambitious project,” said Jason Rose, CPI Project Manager.

“We are proud to have been named as a partner within such a large European-wide consortium.”