The Broader Impact of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to support widespread distribution and adoption of sterilizing biopesticides that are effective and efficient to control Lepidoptera. Lepidopterans, such as the corn earworm, circumvent insecticidal properties of certain crops by developing resistance. Models show that incorporating sterile insects in a corn earworm population can suppress the incidence of resistant individuals in the populations. Enhancing oral infectivity of this sterilizing insect biopesticide will improve product manufacturing, distribution and most importantly, ease of use to support farmer adoption.The proposed project develops a functional orally-infectious formula of a specific strain of the sexually-transmitted, sterilizing-virus, Helicoverpa zea nudivirus 2 (HzNV2). The resulting technology will be suitable for prototyping and testing oral formulations for sterilizing adult corn earworm moths. Genetic selection and candidate gene approaches are proposed to improve stability of the virus entry complex required for oral infectivity. This project will decorate viral envelopes with genes absent from HzNV-2 and thereby improve virion stability. The pseudotyped virus will be assayed for increased oral infectivity.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
