When good bugs go bad
The ladybug: Not as good natured as it looks
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Monday, 26, Mar 2007 12:01
The humble ladybug could be responsible for ruining the taste of hundreds of thousands of barrels worth of wine across the world.
Scientists contend that the polka-dotted insect is tainting the flavour and aroma of wine by getting caught up in the processing and fermentation stages of winemaking and polluting them with a foul-smelling liquid.
At the 233rd national meeting of the American Chemical Society today, researchers from Iowa State University will accuse the ladybug, held in high regard for its role in controlling plant-decimating aphids, as a "good bug gone bad".
Jacek Koziel, an agricultural engineer at the university, and his team used a "highly-sensitive "multidimensional gas chromatograph and a panel of human sniffers" to analyse the odour of more than 300 ladybugs.
They discerned 28 separate smells and four separate root chemicals, all of which belonged to a group of compounds known as methoxypyrazines.
Dr Koziel says that ladybugs are "loaded" with these compounds, which have a similar odour to that of green peppers of roasted peanuts.
But whatever their aroma, the chemicals dispensed by the ladybugs are decimating wine yields by ruining the "natural fruit and floral intensities" in wine.
The scientists also claim that besides wine, ladybugs are responsible for ruining the taste of other crops through their foul-smelling liquid.