If they are successful, the chief problem may be economics: artificial hormones are expensive to synthesize, and there is a limit to the extra cash a farmer or gardener is willing to shell out to achieve environmental purity.

However, high costs may be outweighed by another factor. Some species, such as the malaria mosquito, have developed strains resistant to second generation insecticides like DDT. They can hardly be expected to develop resistance to their own hormones, Williams points out.

THE Rockefeller Foundation also seems to think juvenile hormones are a good bet. Last March it gave $250,000 to Williams, Riddiford, and Fotis C. Kafatos, professor of Biology. The money will pay for five or six postdoctoral fellows who will concentrate on specific problems in the pesticide program.

Besides investigating hormonal insecticides, the group is also screening some 76 compounds for "anti-hor-mone" activity.

"We need a material that will sit on the juvenile hormone site without doing a proper juvenile hormone job," Williams said.

Once anti-hoormone is developed, insects treated with the substance will skip their normal larval development and become miniature adults soon after hatching. Presumably the insects would be sterile, but "at any rate it makes the insect menace smaller," Williams said.

The team will also look for ways of altering mating behavior in specific insects and thus prevent reproduction. Male moths, for example, locate a female by her scent. It may be possible to mask this scent and prevent the opposite sexes from getting together.

Insect resistance to second generation pesticides is no joke. Without effective pesticides, the U.S. would lose somes 25-30 percent of its agricultural production, claims the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Agronomists "are afraid that insects are going to cat up their Green Revolution," Williams said recently.

And the solution?

"I am personally convinced that it is these juvenile hormones that are going to do the job."