Alternatives to Chemical Control of Insect Pests

In 2011, practitioners and advocates of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) find themselves addressing agricultural, societal, and political pressures worldwide resulting from human population growth. This growth brings simultaneous burdens of sustaining a steady food supply; these include preventing losses from pests, dealing with increased human global travel, which in turn intensifies opportunities for the establishment of non-endemic pests into new ecosystems, and addressing global climate change that potentially will shift pest distributions into new areas. Concurrently, societal concerns about pesticide presence in our food and environment have resulted in political and economic pressures to reduce chemical pesticide use, or at a minimum, emphasize the development and use of products that are less toxic and more environmentally safe. These concerns drive the discovery and development of alternatives to chemical control of plant pathogens, weeds, and insect pests. The term Integrated Pest Management has, more often than not, been identified with entomologists. Stern et al. (1959) first used the term “integrated control” to describe the potential for integration of chemical and biological control tactics. Yet from a historical view, the concept of integrating chemical control with other tactics was proposed much earlier (Hoskins et al., 1939). Furthermore, integrating multiple non-chemical tactics to control a pest has been a cornerstone of the discipline of plant pathology throughout much of its early history (Jacobsen, 1997). In fact, because plant pathologists did not have an array of corrective pesticides available to them, the development and integration of control methods that emphasized non-pesticide controls (e.g., genetic host resistance, crop rotations, tillage, and plant sanitation) for plant diseases was a necessity, not simply an option for plant disease management. In contrast, entomologists and weed scientists were more insulated from that necessity due to the availability of relatively inexpensive pesticides to correct a problem. Several events stimulated the necessity for developing IPM programs in entomology, including those that emphasized development of non-chemical methods of insect control (e.g., cultural, biological, and physical control described herein). The chlorinated hydrocarbon, DDT, had been used for control of various insects since the 1950’s. Soon after its use began, some pests began to develop resistance to DDT, including house flies, mosquitos, bed bugs, and body lice (Metcalf, 1989). The publication of Rachel Carson’s book, “Silent Spring”, in 1962 also generated public concern. Carson highlighted the negative