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 are safe to people and wildlife, their specificity is usually very narrow. Their application as bioinsecticides was limited until recently because of their slow killing action and technical difficulties for in vitro commercial production. Successful protection of over 2 million hectares of soybean in Brazil revived the hopes for using baculoviruses as effective biopesticides. Wider application of baculoviruses for pest control is very likely to be implemented in the future and two approaches for improvements of baculovirus killing properties can be foreseen. In countries where the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is restricted, the improvements will be mainly at the level of in vitro production, diagnostics, and changes in biopesticide formulations. In countries that have fewer concerns towards GMOs, the killing activity of baculoviruses may be augmented by genetic modifications of the baculovirus genome. It is expected that baculoviruses improved by genetic modifications will compete successfully with other methods of pest control in many regions of our globe, especially in most densely populated countries of the world. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________