Team:SSHS-Shenzhen/Human Practices
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 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 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, traditional chemical pesticide is the only effective way to prevent infestation. We want to find out the situation of food safety, thus we performed pesticide residue detection at our lab using quick pesticide detection method. Astonishingly, small amounts of chemical residues have been found in almost every samples we tested. Would more accurate and reliable method tell the same story? To find out the answer, we went to the Food Inspection Center of Shenzhen, with the help of experts there we detected 3 kinds of chemical residue from the vegetables. This result makes us concern about the food safety problem. 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 and received 1414 answer sheets. After analysis, we found many people lack knowledge about food safety, which may threaten their health. (Learn more)
We decided to do something to popularize the knowledge about pesticide residue. So, we went to the park, we went to middle school classrooms to popularize people how to detect and remove pesticide residue. We also build a Wechat public platform to post article to popularize people about iGEM and pesticide residues. In addition, we made a project video to introduce our project and knowledges about RNAi mechanism and pesticide. 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. (Learn more)
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 helped us with production system selection. We attended the iGEM Eurasian Meeting, 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 following the Eurasian Meeting, advices and suggestions from TuDelft members helped us come up with our beetle trap design. (Learn more)