Transcriber: Ngoc Anh Vo Reviewer: Mujtaba Abdelwhab
When you buy some strawberries from the store, you wash them right.
A quick rinse under some water. The dirt is gone and they’re ready to eat.
What if I told you that a quick rinse isn't enough to rid those strawberries
of the pesticides that have made them plump and red?
In fact, those strawberries that you're about to eat may be doing you harm.
We eat food to live, to be healthy, to boost our performance, nourish our bodies,
sustain our souls. Food is not meant to hurt us.
It’s not meant to wage a silent war against ourselves and wreak havoc
on our immune systems. Yet the irony exists that in
an attempt to make our food more attractive and abundant,
we cover it in chemicals that have the potential to kill.
Now you might be asking you, Sean, what's so bad about pesticides?
And honestly, there's a lot. But let's just start with the basics.
What is a pesticide? A pesticide is really any substance that is specifically
designed to exterminate a certain species from a certain environment.
Commercial pesticides often include harmful chemicals such as chlorpyrifos,
permethrin and DDT, although the use of DDT is currently banned,
at least in the United States.
Pests aren't picky, unlike us.
They don't care what part of the plant they're eating.
So whether it's those sweet, juicy strawberries or the bitter stems,
it's the nutrients they're after, not the taste,
so they won't stop until they extract every last bit of life the plant has left.
And a farmer whose livelihood depends on getting
an abundant crop to their customers can't just cross their fingers and hope
for the best. It's inevitable that the pests will strike
enter pesticides, a seemingly perfect solution to this destructive problem.
I mean, who wouldn't want something that you can just spray on plants and kill
the insects? But the solution may be worse than the problem.
Pesticides are generally used in a spray application,
and this means that an especially windy conditions.
High concentrations of airborne poison may settle onto nearby towns and cities.
It's been measured that around half of all pesticide related injuries in
the US are as a result of this airborne spread.
And a third of all pesticide related injuries in U.S. schools occur as
a result of pesticide drift. Why is this a bad thing in the first place?
We're exposed to all kinds of chemicals every day.
A few more here, and there can't be too bad for us, right? You'd be surprised.
Let's start with how pesticides affect the length of our telomeres in ourselves.
Telomeres essentially function to prevent our chromosomes from fusing together
as our cells undergo cell division.
The problem is that as we age and our cells divide more,
our telomeres shorten in length,
and when our telomeres hit a certain length,
our cell gets the instruction to kill itself.
To prevent this, our body uses an enzyme called reverse transcriptase to restore
the length of these telomeres. And this seems like a great balance.
That is, until pesticides are involved,
pesticides incur an inflammatory response in cells,
meaning that telomere length significantly shortens before it can ever
be revitalized. And the results of this are severe.
Our cells are either damaged or they self-destruct.
And this could potentially cause cancer.
As if all that wasn't bad enough,
pesticides have also been linked to various forms of developmental injury in
embryos. In 2004, a group of scientists tested six mixtures
and 13 chemicals to see what their effect would be.
And what they found was that six out of the six mixtures and 12 out of
the 13 chemicals caused some sort of developmental injury in these embryos.
This table shows some of these results.
As you can see, the embryos formed with fewer developmental cells called
blastocysts, as well as a fewer amount of cells overall in this embryo as
a result of an increased rate of cell death in the embryos.
This cellular loss may result in various forms of unhealthy pregnancy,
including miscarriage.
Furthermore, these forms of pesticide induced injury occur at concentrations
lower than what is considered safe for human use,
meaning we're actually exposed potentially to more pesticides than
the amount that caused all this damage.
Even worse, those living in agricultural communities face
the worst of these effects
because they are located near farms that regularly use these pesticides.
Overall, pesticides have been linked to various forms of injury
and greater rates of cancer than those with minimal exposure.
And humans aren't the only ones affected by this.
In addition to the human body,
pesticides have adverse effects on the natural environment.
Think about it when pesticides are applied to plants,
even a light rain or watering the plants can wash some of these pesticides off
and make its way into our water supply.
Seemingly innocent streams of water meander through the farmland,
making their way into rivers and eventually oceans.
The pesticides spread. And this spreading has various harmful effects
on our environment. An example can be seen in bee colonies.
Pesticides negatively affect bee colonies in that direct spray compromises
the life of worker bees, and pesticide residue is often stored in the hive
because bee colonies essentially function as if there are one working organism.
The failure of worker bees harms the entire colony.
And without bees, pollination would essentially come to a stop
and without pollination, fruiting plants that fuel our food supply would be unable
to reproduce, and significant portions of our food supply would be compromised.
And this extends to our environment in general.
If one part of our environment is harmed,
the rest of our environment exhibits these changes as well.
The interconnectedness of our environment is undeniable and
the effect of pesticides are irreversible. And it almost seems unavoidable.
Pests will always be there to attack our crops.
And so it's not like we can just stop using pesticides, but we can do better,
we must do better. Luckily, I have a solution.
Enter Cordyceps militaris, a species of fungi whose spores are specifically
designed to attack the exoskeleton of an attacked pests.
Now for such an obscure sounding and quite frankly weird looking mushroom,
you might be wondering why I'm so set on this particular species.
Let me take you back three years ago when I found an article about
a mushroom that could eat plastics.
And so I wondered if there was a mushroom that could eat plastics.
Surely there was one that could eat insects? And I was right.
Upon further research, I actually found
a species of fungi that wasn't that well tested and was actually really promising
as an agricultural pesticide Cordyceps militaris
How does Cordyceps militaris attack pests? The answer lies in the spores.
These spores have adhesion proteins that bind to the insect exoskeleton
or cuticle, and through a series of physical and chemical processes,
the fungus establishes an opening or a pathway between it and the insects.
It deactivate sensors that would normally obstruct parasitic behavior.
And after this, it sends spores inside the insects so it can deplete all of
the nutrients inside the insects.
And once this is complete,
the fungus colonizes and produces spores inside the insects and expels
these into the surrounding environment where it can go and attack more pests
This photo shows Cordyceps militaris growing out of an insect
As you can see, it's completely taken over the insect and using its nutrients
for its own gain and will only continue to attack more.
After deciding I would use Cordyceps militaris,
I decided to test it on an annoyingly common and equally destructive pest.
The aphid. We’ve known anti-aphid techniques for ages now: ladybugs, soap,
and some even say vinegar. But let's be real.
Who really wants strawberries with the side of soap?
And how common are ladybugs anyway to be used on millions of crops worldwide?
The point is, although these solutions are effective,
they're not always the most practical on both the gardening
and agricultural scale. But Cordyceps militaris fits all of these criteria.
And more: it’s easy to obtain.
I mean, you can go into one of your farmer's markets and there's
a chance you’ll find a fresh pack, of Cordyceps militaris waiting just for you.
It's easy to replenish as it can be grown easily,
and it poses no risks to us because it is literally edible.
The application process is fairly straightforward as well.
All you need to do is make a simple spray.
All you need is three fourths cups of the fruiting body and a cup of water.
Put it in a blender. Sift out the residue using a cheesecloth
and you have a spray that's ready to go and kill aphids.
Right now you see two sprays.
The one on the right should be the one that you're making because the one
the left was made when I was actually growing the mushroom from grain jars,
so it has some grain inside of it.
Either way, all you have to do is spray on the desired area and it’ll act upon the
area on which it is sprayed. After about a year of extensive research
and testing to get familiar with the gardening environments,
I decided to test Cordyceps militarists on cabbage and kohlrabi plants.
Preliminary trials suggested that aphids often died after six days,
of Cordyceps’ spraying, my methods involve spraying on the first day,
observing on the second day and repeating this for four more days.
Here on the left, we see a cabbage plant that's completely swarmed with aphids
without any intervention
On the right, it shows the exact same plant after six days of methodical,
Cordyceps militaris spraying.
What was once a healthy, vibrant aphid population is now a lifeless wasteland.
And from this, I knew my results were clear.
The aphids died when Cordyceps militaris was applied. So was this it?
Did I create waves in the agricultural industry with my new invention?
Was this the biggest thing ever Before I got ahead of myself,
I first needed to run more tests to solidify my hypothesis.
Shortly afterwards, I experienced problems with aphids,
completely swallowing my plants to the point where I couldn't even walk into
the vicinity without getting aphids all over my body.
Showering afterwards was a pain, to say the least,
and it took a while to get used to
the vomit inducing sensation of bugs all over me. Something needed to be done.
And so I decided to use all the remaining spray I had made
on these plants. It honestly felt like something out of the movie Avatar,
just mindlessly spraying everything in my path without any mercy for these insects.
And the results of this from that sensation,
as well as, almost all of the aphids had died within just two days.
Here on the left, you might be wondering,
I just said that they had killed all the aphids.
Why am I seeing some clusters of aphids?
And the answer to that is that I'd actually run out of spray.
So I decided to just use some here and there wherever I could really land
the spray. And at first, these results made no sense to me, but after a while,
it started to sink in wherever the spray was applied.
the aphids died. And on the right you see a close up of the Cordyceps attacking
the aphids. Only at this point. Can you really call them aphids?
Or are they more Cordyceps covered corpses?
Here we have a picture of a plant that was sprayed and
a plant that wasn’t sprayed on the left.
The sprayed plant is almost completely free of aphids and on the right
the plant that wasn't sprayed is still completely swarmed with aphids.
And to me, this picture best highlights the stark contrast.
Because, after all, isn't that the point of a pesticide to free a plant of
the pests that plague its health?
It is now time to move out of the backyard and into
the real world where this can change so many things.
You don't even have to be a farmer or even
a gardener to have some sort of interest in this discussion.
You are a person who eats food,
and that alone qualifies you as a stakeholder in this discussion.
At the very least, we should know what is on and in the food we eat
because it not only affects our health,
but the health of the environment as well.
And as long as pesticides continue to be used,
the health of the environment will suffer. I mean, look at the bees.
Look at those in agriculture communities. The quality of our water.
These are all things that will suffer as pesticides continue to be used.
And with the growing threat,
the sustainability issue that is facing us in the coming decades,
this problem will only get worse.
That’s why the natural alternative, of Cordyceps militaris
is one of the only safe options we have right now that is extremely
effective, cheap to produce,
easy to use and safe for both our physical and environmental health.
It poses no harm to the environment as it already exists in conjunction with
the natural world, and we don't have to worry about Cordyceps attacking us
because it's literally edible
and its spores are designed to attack only specific insects.
So the next time you walk into a grocery store and pick a pack of strawberries,
pick up a pack of Cordyceps too so let say half of them with some onions for dinner
and use the rest to blend up a pesticide for your garden. Thank you.
(Applause)