Revision as of 04:31, 13 October 2018

Summary

Pest infections seriously affect the yield and quality of vegetables, we wanted to do something to help with this problem. First of all, in order to know more about the situation of pest infection, we did a field investigation at Shenzhen University’s field station (See HP 1), and found that the striped flea beetle is the most serious kinds of pests. To identify this highly destructive species, we went to Shenzhen University for expert consultation (See HP 2) and learned this beetle belongs to Phyllotreta Striolata. To find out what approaches the farmers are currently using to control this pest, we went to the field station again and were told that currently, the traditional chemical pesticide is the only effective way to prevent infestation. We then went to the Food Inspection Center of Shenzhen (See HP 3) to figure out if the extensive use of chemical pesticide. causes food safety problem, and detected 3 kinds of chemical residue from the samples. This result makes us concern about the food safety problem. We want to find out the situation of food safety in small farmer’s markets, where food safety control is less strict. We also want to find a simple pesticide residue detection method, which people can use at home. Then we performed another round of pesticide residue detection using quick pesticide detection method (See HP 4). Astonishingly, small amounts of chemical residues have been found in almost every sample we tested. We wondered: are the general public aware of the commonly existed food safety problem? Do they know how to deal with this problem? Therefore, we did an online survey (See HP 5), and received 1414 answer sheets. After analysis, we found many people don’t treat pesticide residue before cooking, and some of them do not know how to remove pesticide residues from vegetables. Lack of knowledge in food safety may threaten their health, so we decided to do something to popularize the knowledge about pesticide residue. So, we went to the park (See HP 6), we went to middle school classrooms (See HP 7) to popularize people how to detect and remove pesticide residue. We also build a Wechat public platform (See HP 8) to post article to popularize people about iGEM and pesticide residues. Most importantly, we realized that pesticide residue is of a big concern for human health. We decided to grasp a green weapon and launch a battle against Phyllotreta Striolata

The direction of our project is further shaped and improved by communication with experts and other iGEM teams. For example, attending the 2018 iGEM Southern China Regional Meeting (See HP 9) helped us with production system selection. During the meeting, we brought our dilemma about production system selection, other iGEMers gave us many useful advice, we learned that in vitro transcription system is much less complex and easier to operate than E. coli expression system. We attended the iGEM Eurasian Meeting (See HP 10), and have got lots of good feedback from other iGEM teams after we presented our project, which is really inspiring. Our team then co-hosted a further meetup with SZU-China and TU Delft (See HP 11) following the Eurasian Meeting, advice and suggestions from TuDelft members helped us come up with our beetle trap design.