Review of Essential Oils: A Viable Pest Control Alternative

The potential of botanical essential oils for insect pest control

Today, Insect Pest management (IPM) has to face up to the economic and ecological consequences of the use of pest control measures. Fifty years of sustained struggle against harmful insects using synthetic and oil-derivative molecules has produced perverse secondary effects (mammalian toxicity, insect resistance and ecological hazards). The diversification of the approaches inherent in IPM is n...

Biological effects of essential oils--a review.

Since the middle ages, essential oils have been widely used for bactericidal, virucidal, fungicidal, antiparasitical, insecticidal, medicinal and cosmetic applications, especially nowadays in pharmaceutical, sanitary, cosmetic, agricultural and food industries. Because of the mode of extraction, mostly by distillation from aromatic plants, they contain a variety of volatile molecules such as te...

Plant essential oils for pest and disease management

Certain essential plant oils, widely used as fragrances and #avors in the perfume and food industries, have long been reputed to repel insects. Recent investigations in several countries con"rm that some plant essential oils not only repel insects, but have contact and fumigant insecticidal actions against speci"c pests, and fungicidal actions against some important plant pathogens. As part of ...

Baculoviruses: A Safe Alternative in Pest Control?

Broad spectrum chemical pest control agents have been widely regarded as ecologically unacceptable. Due to this opinion, there is the increased social pressure to reduce their use in the future and gradually replace them by biopesticides. Viruses of a few families are known to infect invertebrates, but only those belonging to the family Baculoviridae have been used for biocontrol of pests. They...

Fungal Entomopathogens: An Enigmatic Pest Control Alternative