The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced on December 22, 2023, that it has registered biopesticide merchandise containing the brand new lively ingredient Ledprona for 3 years, “a timeframe that is consistent with EPA’s approach to other novel biopesticide products.” Ledprona is a brand new kind of pesticide that depends on a pure mechanism, RNA interference (RNAi), utilized by vegetation and bugs to guard in opposition to illness. As reported in our October 12, 2023, blog item, Ledprona is a sprayable double-stranded ribonucleic acid (dsRNA) product concentrating on the Colorado potato beetle (CPB), a serious pest of potato crops grown within the United States. According to EPA, whereas the CPB is thought to develop resistance quickly to chemical-based pesticides, the sprayable dsRNA product “kills the pest by ‘silencing’ the CPB gene needed to produce the PSMB5 protein, whose role is essential to keeping the CPB alive, without resulting in a genetically modified organism.” EPA notes that this pesticide is “the first sprayable dsRNA pesticide in the world allowed to be used commercially and sprayed on plants.”

Commentary

EPA has reviewed and accredited a number of genetically modified crops containing RNAi know-how. Ledprona is the primary biopesticide lively ingredient containing sprayable RNAi know-how that reached this milestone, nevertheless. EPA states that it helps developments in novel pesticide know-how similar to Ledprona “because this technology replaces more toxic chemical-based pesticides, provide[s] an additional tool for farmers to address challenges of climate change, and aids in resistance management.” According to EPA, novel pesticide know-how can supply options to chemical-based pesticides that will pose greater potential dangers to human well being or the surroundings or have lowered effectiveness due to resistance points.

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