A new environmentally friendly insecticide may be developed with the help of Iowa State professors.

For the past three years, Joel Coats, professor of entomology and toxicology, has worked on extracting glucosinolates from plants. Glucosinolates are chemicals which plants in the mustard family — including the crambe plant, an alternative crop produced mainly in North Dakota and Minnesota — produce to protect themselves from insects.

Researchers hope to make glucosinolate extract into a safe, biodegradable insecticide.

Coats’ research got initial funding from a grant the ISU Center for Crops Utilization Research (CCUR) received to examine the crambe plant. The glucosinolate research is now being funded by the Iowa Soybean Promotion Board to examine the effects it has on soybean cyst nematodes, microscopic worms harmful to crops.

Coats said the research team studying glucosinolates is working in conjugation with researchers from the CCUR, who are studying the crambe plant itself. Glucosinolates must be extracted from the plants, or they will be too toxic to use. They are removed with water to form a crude toxic mixture which is chemically unstable.

Coats said his research team is trying to develop the glucosinolate extract into an insecticide which can be sprayed or drenched into the soil. The glucosinolate extract may leave more sublethal effects such as keeping the insects away, or preventing them from eating the plants.

Some insects, Coats said, have been significantly controlled with the extract insecticide. Glucosinolates have been found to affect corn root worms, flies and mosquitoes.

But the research is still preliminary.

“We need to purify the chemical and get it more stable so we can use it more feasibly to control insects,” Coats said. “We still need more work on how to deliver it to the insect.”

Rong Tsao, post doctoral research associate, said glucosinolates can be applied to any type of plant. He said both farmers and gardeners may be able to use the product.

“We are making pretty good progress with the project,” Tsao said. “We have found marketable products which are environmentally benign.”

Coats said research will be completed in about two years. He said researchers are starting to make a synthetic derivative of glucosinolates which might be more effective than the natural compounds.

“It’s certainly advisable to move toward more natural ways of controlling or suppressing insects and pests,” Coats said. “It is important for us [the university] and the state of Iowa.”