Internship

Currently i'm undergoing my internship in Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (MARDI) which is situated in Serdang, Selangor. My internship is from 12th May tilll 4th July which is 8 weeks. MARDI is a statutory body and undertakes research and development (R&D) in food and tropical agriculture.Over here i'm involved in developing Nucleopolyhedrovirus(NPV) in powder form. In my research department, we focus on two agricultural insect pest which are Spodoptera litura and Spodoptera exigua. Both of them are from family Lepidoptera and order Noctuidae.NPV are rod-shaped double-stranded DNA viruses of the family Baculoviridae which infect a wide range of insect species, chiefly Lepidoptera. NPV are highly specific and highly infectious. A supply of healthy, disease-free insects is the first requirement of any programme to either produce or test insect viruses. Therefore, in MARDI, there is an insectory to serve this purpose. My job starts at 8 am and ends at 5 pm. I'll go to the insectory at 8 am to prepare artificial diet for Spodoptera litura and Spodoptera exigua. I also transfer the larvas to a new artificial diet and collect pupas if any. 10 am, i'll have my minum session with Kin Yip and Jeremy until 10.45 am. The minum session should be only 30 minutes but nevermindlah..Haha.. In the afternoon after lunch, i'll infect the lucky larvas with the NPV virus. After a week, i can harvest the virus from the dead infected larvas. The harvested virus will have to be centrifuged in order to have a semi-purified NPV virus. That is wat i do everyday but sometimes i'm pretty free, so i'll blog. NPV is a bio pesticide which can be incorporated in Insect Pest Management(IPM).

Posted by Boon Hein