[CH] Hothouse!
R.Solarion - Apollonius.Net (damis@apollonius.net)
Fri, 20 Aug 1999 15:26:39 -0500
Associated Press, 20 August 1999
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Chiles are a big turnoff for termites. And the hotter they are, the less
they like them.
A Texas researcher who laced samples of wood with extra-hot chiles found
that the insects took a single chomp, then hurriedly backed off.
A new insect repellent is the result of researcher Grady J. Glenn's work.
It taps the power of the ripe habanero pepper, which is 60 times hotter
than its cousin, the jalapeņo, and 10 times hotter than cayenne. The spicy
ingredient is being mixed into caulks, paints, glues and rubber-coating
materials, and any creature unfortunate enough to take a nibble gets a
sizzling surprise.
"Pretty quick they learned which end of the wood had habanero," Mr. Glenn
said. "I don't blame them."
Mr. Glenn, using a technique developed at the New Mexico Institute of
Mining and Technology in Socorro, conducted studies this summer at Texas
A&M University. He was able to add termites to the list of pests that
could be deterred by capsaicin and other chemicals that give chiles their
bite.
Earlier tests found that roadrunners avoided pecking fence posts treated
with the peppery material and that rats shunned cables coated with it.
Capsaicin-laced paint has been effective in the fight against the zebra
mussel, a prolific pest in the Great Lakes, said C. Ed Hall of MEDD4, the
Santa Fe company that bought the rights to market the New Mexico
Tech-patented concept developed by researchers Lorenzo Torres and Frank
Etscorn.
The company hopes the technique will be adapted to keep termites from
eating through walls.
"It works with other chiles, but the habanero is basically the
nuclear-grade chile," Mr. Hall said.
Termites, Mr. Glenn said, aren't bright. They spend their lives randomly
bumping into things and then taking a bite to see if they've found food.
If the substance is edible, they hurry back to their nest, leaving a trail
of chemicals that other termites follow to the feast.
The key to Tech's research was the discovery of a technique to chemically
bond chile molecules to other substances.
Now researchers are looking into treating wood at lumber mills with a
capsaicin-based wash, Mr. Hall said.
Texas A&M is testing peppers' heat against another scourge - fire ants.
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"In the ant's house, the dew is a flood."
Old Turkish Proverb
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