Fernanda Gonzalez EDINBURG – A research study, started during the COVID-19 pandemic, will now change the Rio Grande Valley after the research team, led by UTRGV Associate Professor Debasish Bandyopadhyay, discovered a way to turn aloe vera peels into pesticides.
Bandyopadhyay visited an aloe vera farm where the plant piqued his interest because of its resistance to insects.
“So, I found that some places there are like randomly some other plants that are affected by the insects,” he said. “But the aloe plants, they are not much affected, or you can say least affected maybe one or two bite marks.”
Bandyopadhyay said he believed the plant must have a protecting agent that safeguards the sage, which is commonly known as the most useful part of the plant.
He said he brought the plant to his lab where he dried it by using a bioactivity-guided procedure. The procedure allows researchers to find out which part of the substance has the most powerful effect on living organisms.
Bryan Ramirez, graduate chemistry student, explained the process of turning aloe vera into pesticide.
“We place them in the dehydrator to suck out all the moisture.,” Ramirez said. “So, all we’re left with is just the essentially just the dry peel with no water.”
He said the peels are transformed into powder. The powder is then mixed with leaves and silica. The mixture is then poured into a column chromatography, which is a device used to separate components based on polarity.
“So, we’ll run through maybe 15 compounds in here, and from there we’ll start identifying and purifying which ones are our key points of interest,” Ramirez said.
According to Bandyopadhyay, the pesticide made in the laboratory has worked well against a couple of types of mosquitos.
Ramirez says the next step of the research is to wait for a collaborator that may help up the scale of the project.
“Change the procedure methods a little bit so it’s more cheaper and easier to produce,” he said. “That can way we can test more on larger farm areas, not just the smaller fields.”
The first phase of the project was completed in 2023.
