Russian scientists have learned to shock spiders to protect plants
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Scientists from the Novosibirsk State Agrarian University (NSAU) and the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences are creating plant protection products based on spider venom. Ivan Dubovsky, head of the laboratory for biological plant protection at NSAU, announced the development.
“We extract poison from the spider, they separate it into components, then the components are used to protect plants,” he described the process, calling the direction of creating bioinsecticides promising.
The procedure for collecting poison is as follows: the spider is put to sleep with carbon dioxide, then an electric discharge is applied and the spider releases poison. Then he wakes up and is ready to accumulate it again.
Work, in particular, is with large predatory tarantulas. “We have up to 50 species of spiders,” said Dubovsky. “We study the most understudied.”
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