Biological production of insect pheromones in cell and plant factories

Abstract In this chapter we describe how a “green chemistry”-alternative to conventional synthetic pheromone production has evolved. The focus is on the production of moth pheromones because of our own research bias but the same approach should be applicable for the production of pheromones of many other insects. Our recent efforts to produce moth pheromones in cell and plant factories build on the extensive research on moth pheromone biosynthesis that took off in the research group of professor Wendell Roelofs at the New York Agricultural Experiment station, Cornell University, in the early 1980s. The explosion of molecular tools and “omics” from the end of the 1990s and onwards has facilitated the identification and characterization of genes involved in biosynthesis and their use in metabolic engineering of both plants and microbes, paving the way for construction of plant and cell factories for large-scale biological production of pheromones and pheromone precursors. This strategy is innovative, environmentally friendly, and has the potential to become a cost-effective way of producing large quantities of pheromones with high purity and a minimum of waste. Biological production of insect pheromones may thus become an economically sound part of many integrated pest management (IPM) programs.