Future Trends in Biocontrol

Historically, research in biocontrol has yielded discoveries of both fundamental biology and solutions for practical problems in agriculture. Advances on both fronts will be furthered by a better understanding of the complex ecology that surrounds the disease-retardant interactions of microorganisms and plants. The emerging tools of modern biology afford increasingly sophisticated approaches to dissect the multichannel dialogue among the plants, pathogens, biological control agents, and microbial communities that provide the biological context for disease and its suppression. As these research avenues are pursued, new principles of organismal interactions and community function and new strategies for deployment of biocontrol agents will emerge. To realize the practical potential of biocontrol for agricultural production, it will be imperative to unite knowledge of mechanistic interactions with an appreciation of the complexity of the agroecosystem. Understanding the recognition, signaling, and cooperative and antagonistic interplay between the biological partners will lead to strategies to direct the outcome of the interaction more precisely and consistently. Knowledge of the events leading to disease control may suggest modifications in the timing, placement, and formulation of the biocontrol agent to achieve maximum disease control. Similarly, that knowledge may indicate situations in which certain biocontrol agents will not be successful and may thus lead to wiser choices to tailor the agent to the physical, chemical, and biological context into which it will be introduced. The future research challenges in biocontrol move beyond the suppression of plant disease to include impacts on human health and registration processes.