Between the Lines

Larry Dignan, Andrew Nusca and Rachel King

SmartPlanet: Can bees be trained to prevent plant disease?

By | May 26, 2010, 2:15am PDT

Dr. Andrew Sutherland, a researcher with the UC Davis Plant Pathology Department is training honey bees to detect plant disease in agricultural crops. Bees have excellent chemosensors on their antennae, so they’re able to detect organic molecules. Using Ivan Pavlov’s method of ‘classical conditioning’, Sutherland is teaching bees to associate infected plants with a sugar reward. After they are conditioned, the bees are placed inside a box and taken to the field, where if they encounter the same smell, the information is relayed back as a warning sign. Other collaborators on the project include: Dr. Robert M. Wingo; Los Alamos National Laboratory Chemistry Division, Dr. W. Douglas Gubler; UC Davis Plant Pathology and Dr. Kirsten J. McCabe; Los Alamos National Laboratory Bioscience Division.

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Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic.

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Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan has nothing to disclose. He doesn’t hold investments in the technology companies he covers.

Biography

Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic. He was most recently Executive Editor of News and Blogs at ZDNet. Prior to that he was executive news editor at eWeek and news editor at Baseline. He also served as the East Coast news editor and finance editor at CNET News.com. Larry has covered the technology and financial services industry since 1995, publishing articles in WallStreetWeek.com, Inter@ctive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning magazine. He's a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism and the University of Delaware.

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