Entomopathogenic nematodes (EN) are being utilized as a biological control agent for insect pests. Many additional potential applications are limited by production volume and cost. Large-scale production in traditional bioreactors has only modestly impacted production costs due to the expenses associated with conventional bioreactor design and operation. This proposal seeks to utilize a recently described low-capital investment bioreactor to gain the economics of scale provided by liquid culture while still retaining flexibility in production to meet seasonal demand. This proposal seeks to gain a basic understanding of the requirements for liquid fermentation of EN from the perspective of utilizing this knowledge to minimize production costs. The fermentation is complicated by the use of complex medium and requiring an initial phase of growth of the symbiont followed by nematode addition. Initial experiments are designed to provide a quantitative yet inexpensive basis for monitoring and control of the process. Subsequent experiments seek to take advantage of the ability of the bacterial symbiont to produce antibiotics and reduce overall sterilization and asepsis requirements for the process. The final experiments seek to improve overall production rates utilizing oxygen supplementation.
Anticipated Results/Potential Commercial Applications of Research: Production of infective stage EN will be accomplished at the pilot scale with a minimum of capital investment and operating costs. General techniques of monitoring cultures in complex medium will be developed and applied to improve the process performance. Specifically, we expect more and lower priced U.S. produced nematodes for use in horticulture, forestry and fly control in animal production.
