Vegetables, cultivated on 4.65 million ha with annual production of 53.5 million t in South and Southeast Asia, are subject to severe yield losses from insect pests and diseases in the tropics. Chemical pesticides account for onethird to one-half of the total mean material input cost for vegetable production in the region. Extensive and inappropriate pesticide use has led to pests developing re...

Millions of microbial taxa inhabit the rhizosphere and could be used as biofertilizers, biopesticides, and/or for bioremediation. Only a fraction of these microbes have been described and/or are being utilized. Most are dispersed in collections, but coordination of their accessibility and availability is challenging. Here, we present the Pan-European Rhizosphere Resource Network (PERN), which i...

As many strategies to control malaria use insecticides against adult mosquitoes, control is undermined by the continual evolution of resistant mosquitoes. Here we suggest that using alternative insecticides, or conventional insecticides in alternative ways might enable effective control, but delay considerably or prevent the evolution of resistance. Our reasoning relies on an epidemiological an...

Loosely integrated and incomplete policy networks have been neglected in the literature. They are important to consider in terms of understanding network underperformance. The effective delivery and formulation of policy requires networks that are not incomplete or underperforming. The biopesticides policy network in the UK is considered and its components identified with an emphasis on the lac...

Agriculture is adversely affected by numerous pests like bacteria, fungi, weeds and insects, leading to reduced yield and poor quality of the produce [1]. Since 1960s, the most common method for pest control has been the intensive use of synthetic pesticides. Such pesticide was adopted in 1940s with the use of dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (DDT), followed by other organophosphate and carbam...

The objective of the present study was to investigate the utilization of pupal waste and silkworm litter separately as production media for the mass cultivation of the potential biopesticide, Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). Bt is the most successful commercial biopesticide accounting for 90% of all biopesticides sold all over the world. Biochemical analysis of the dry pupal waste revealed to be co...

Biopesticides are formulations derived from naturally occurring compounds that manage pests through non-toxic and environmentally favorable means. Being living organisms (natural enemies) or products, biopesticides represent less of a risk to the environment human health. Biopesticides, classified into three broad classes, increasingly used in pest control, include semiochemicals, plant-incorpo...