When Dr Sam Lowor was a Cotton CRC funded PhD student with UNE in the early 2000s, he identified the chemical composition of a sex pheromone for the green mirid, a voracious cotton pest.
The sex pheromone is now used to make lures to bait traps that catch the bug.
The green mirid (Creontiades dilutes) is a sap-sucking bug that causes millions of dollars in damage to Australian cotton crops. Dr Lowor’s former supervisors at UNE, Dr Alice Del Socorro and Professor Peter Gregg, with support from the Cotton Research and Development Corporation, developed a way to use information gained from traps baited with the pheromone to inform farmers’ decisions on pesticide spraying.
Unable to find an Australian supplier, they established EcoKimiko IPM Pty Ltd which, under a licence from UNE, markets the lures. Now, years after his discovery, Sam has received his first royalty payment from UNE.
Professor Gregg says that while the lure is "unlikely to make a fortune, we see the commercial development of innovative products like this as a step in establishing both EcoKimiko and UNE as leaders in developing solutions in behavioural manipulation for the management of agricultural pests".
Dr Lowor is pleased to have received his first royalty payment, although he is far more pleased that his work has finally been successfully deployed.
“You do this work as a student and then move on with your life – I moved back to Ghana and work at our Cocoa Research Institute. It is incredibly satisfying to see these new approaches to pest management reduce environmental impacts through targeted pesticide spraying, particularly when you know it’s based on your work from almost 20 years ago.”
