Integrated Pest Management and Risk Assessment of Biopesticides

Dear Colleagues,

Synthetic pesticides constitute an integral part of modern agriculture. Regardless, there are growing concerns about their frequent detection in natural resources, which, based on their acknowledged undesirable off-target effects, constitute a major risk for the environment and human health.

Currently, plant protection products are based predominantly on the use of chemical synthesised pesticides. However, concerns still remain about the impact of chemical pesticides on human and animal health and the environment. Controlling pests that damage crops and plants is necessary both to safeguard food security and to ensure viable income to farmers for their production. This needs to be achieved while minimising risks to people and the environment. Such an approach, using natural methods whenever possible and chemical pesticides as a last resort, is in line with the definition of ‘integrated pest management’ from the International Code of Conduct on Pesticide Management, which emphasises the growth of a healthy crop with the least possible disruption to agroecosystems and encourages natural pest control mechanisms.

The development of alternative active substances for the control of crop pests and their implementation in Integrated Pest Management strategies have been encouraged to address these concerns. Biological pest control agents can contribute to the development of new integrate pest control strategies, as they generally pose little health or environment risk and can have good compatibility with many beneficial invertebrates used in integrated pest control methods.

Biological products, including microbial pesticides, plant extracts, and semiochemicals such as pheromones or allelochemicals, are gaining ground as new solutions for the substitution of synthetic pesticides. In addition, new microbial solutions (phages, protists, microbial consortia) and ds-RNA pesticides are emerging; biological solutions and low-risk products are expected to reach the market in the coming years. Despite ongoing global efforts by the OECD, European Union, and FAO to address the regulatory constraints, we are still lacking a concrete risk assessment scheme relevant to these biological solutions.

Ecosystems are important for regulating pests and vector-borne diseases that attack plants, though the activities of predators and parasites, such as birds, bats, flies, wasps, frogs, and fungi, all act as natural controls. There is need to assess the ecosystem impacts associated with the release of any of these low-risk biopesticides and develop specific methods of determining their possible non-target effects. Adequate monitoring and the use of molecular techniques to identify and follow the movement of biological products are needed to examine and mitigate the potential negative biological impacts. 

Dr. Belen Guijarro
Guest Editor

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• microbial pest control agent
• biopesticide
• microbial consortia
• microbiome
• microbiome modulation
• ds-RNA pesticides
• risk management
• risk assessment
• low-risk pesticide
• secondary metabolite of concern
• antimicrobial resistance organic production
• integrated pest management
• ecosystem services
• greenhouse gas emission