Beating the Mosquito Menace By PAROMITA PAIN
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U.S.-India Science and Technology Endowment Fund-supported Vectrax promises to be a cost-effective and sustainable solution to fight the hazard of disease-bearing mosquitoes.
dvances in science are often about challenging dominant paradigms. Agenor Mafra-Neto knows this well. He is the chief executive officer of ISCA, a California-based agricultural biotech company that brings new, effective and inexpensive solutions to global agriculture. His research has led to the creation of Vectrax, an ecofriendly and sustainable solution to fight the hazard of disease-bearing mosquitoes in both urban and rural settings. “In the early 2000s, my brother and sister, who lived in large cities in Brazil, caught dengue,” says Mafra-Neto. “How could they catch dengue in the middle of a city? That got me thinking about how difficult it is to control the breeding of mosquitoes in urban areas.” Mosquitoes are vectors that may carry and transmit several harmful diseases to humans and animals through their bites. Mafra-Neto, who holds doctoral and postdoctoral degrees in entomology/chemical ecology, started looking into the field of mosquito control and realized that there was “very little innovative thinking” when it came to chemical ecology. “At that time, there was a dogma stating that female
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mosquitoes feed only on blood and males feed only on sweet excretions from plants,” he says. Intrigued, he took a fresh look at what attracted mosquitoes in the first place.
Attract and kill “We saw that adult mosquitoes, both male and female, use plant nectar as fuel for their various activities,” says Mafra-Neto. “We started working on scents and different compounds that mimic odors of plants providing these nectar meals to mosquitoes.” This research led Mafra-Neto’s team to create Vectrax, a patented odor-based solution that mimics the scents of plants mosquitoes feed upon, attracts and effectively eliminates the pests. Recently, the project received funding from the U.S.-India Science and Technology Endowment Fund (USISTEF). The fund supports research and development to generate public good, through the commercialization of technology developed as part of sustained partnerships between U.S. and Indian researchers and entrepreneurs.
