ENT-403

BIOLOGICAL CONTROL OF
INSECT PESTS AND WEEDS
 INTRODUCTION
AND
CONCEPT OF
BIOLOGICAL CONTROL
BIOLOGICAL CONTROL - INTRODUCTION

 Humans have attempted to

 eradicate,

 control, or

 manage the pests

 using a wide variety of methods
including
 chemical,
 biological,
 cultural,
 and mechanical control.
 The main strategy used in the second
half of the 20th century for controlling
pests has been the use of chemical
pesticides.
BIOLOGICAL CONTROL - INTRODUCTION

 The pesticide revolution began in the early

1940s with the development of synthetic
pesticides.
 These pesticides showed a remarkable ability
to kill pests without any apparent side-effects.
 The early success of synthetic pesticides led
many experts to believe that they had
discovered the “silver bullet” for pest control.
BIOLOGICAL CONTROL - INTRODUCTION
 As a result, biological, cultural, and mechanical
controls were often
 underutilized or
 disregarded as viable pest management
strategies.
 Although pesticides provided a short-term
solution for many pest problems, the long-term
negative effects of using pesticides did not
begin to surface until the late 1950s.
BIOLOGICAL CONTROL - INTRODUCTION

 In1962, Rachel Carson’s book Silent

Spring provided the general public with
the first warning that many pesticides
produced undesirable side-effects on our
environment.
 Further consequences of over-reliance on
pesticides became apparent over the next
few decades.
Write one paragraph on the main theme
of this book and a short note to agree or
disagree with the opinion of the author
 For example,
 prior to the 1940s, it was estimated
that insects destroyed 7% of the
world’s crops.
 By the late 1980s, crop destruction
due to pests had risen to 13%.
BIOLOGICAL CONTROL - INTRODUCTION
 This doubling of crop damage since the
pesticide revolution occurred despite a
12-fold increase in pesticide use.
 The increase in crop destruction is due,

in part, to increased incidence of

 pesticide resistance,

 secondary pest outbreaks,

 and natural enemy destruction.

BIOLOGICAL CONTROL - INTRODUCTION

 These problems, coupled with

 increasing environmental concerns

 and pesticide costs,

have forced growers to seek more

environmentally safe and cost-
effective pest control strategies.
BIOLOGICAL CONTROL - INTRODUCTION
 In recent decades, elevated awareness of the
impacts of pesticide use on the environment
and human health have resulted in efforts to
reduce reliance on chemical controls.
 Many countries have instituted more stringent
regulation of pesticide manufacture,
registration and use, thereby
 increasing the cost, and
 decreasing the availability of these tools.
BIOLOGICAL CONTROL - INTRODUCTION
 In many cases, the pests themselves have
indicated the need for change, with
pesticide resistance now a common
reality in many weeds, insects and
diseases.
 The need for alternatives to pesticides is
clear, but where will these solutions come
from?
A report by the U. S. Congress, Office
of Technology indicated that
biologically based technologies, such
as biological control, could be more
widely used to solve pressing needs
in pest management.
BIOLOGICAL CONTROL - INTRODUCTION
 The use of natural enemies to reduce the
impacts of pests has a long history.
 The ancient Chinese, observing that ants
were effective predators of many citrus pests,
augmented their populations by taking their
nests from surrounding habitats and placing
them into their orchards.
 One of the most promising, yet underused,
pest control strategies is biological control.
BIOLOGICAL CONTROL - INTRODUCTION

 Due to the facts that

(1) earth will have to feed about 11
billion human beings in the near
future,
(2) fossil energy is running out, and
thus are conventional synthetic
pesticides,
(3) man cannot continue to pollute the
environment and reduce biodiversity
at the same dramatic rate as during
the past 100 years,

 agricultural
research needs to be
redirected to a systems approach.
BIOLOGICAL CONTROL - INTRODUCTION

 Modern pest management will

strongly depend on biological control,
because it is the
 most sustainable,

 cheapest

 and environmentally safest pest

management method.
Inaddition, it has important
benefits for farmers and
consumers.
Biological control is expected to
make up 35-40% of all crop
protection methods in the year
2050.
BIOLOGICAL CONTROL - INTRODUCTION
 Some facts about biological control:
 Natural (biological) control is constantly
active in all world terrestrial ecosystems
on 89.5 million km2
 Most of the potential arthropod pests
(95%, 100,000 arthropod species) are
under natural (biological) control;
BIOLOGICAL CONTROL - INTRODUCTION

 all other control methods used today are

targeted at the remaining 5,000 arthropod
pest species.
 This ecosystem function of natural biological
control is estimated to have an annual
minimum value of 400 billion US$ per year.
 which is an enormous amount compared to
the only 8.5 billion US$ annually spent on
insecticides.
BIOLOGICAL CONTROL - INTRODUCTION
 Classical biological control is applied on 3.5
million km2 (350 million hectares), which is
about 8% of land under culture, and has very
high benefit-cost ratios of 20-500 : 1.
 Augmentative, commercial biological control
is applied on 0.16 million km2,
 which is 0.4 % of land under culture, and has
a benefit-cost ratio of 2-5 : 1,
 which is similar to or better than chemical
pest control
 More than 5,000 introductions of about
2,000 species of exotic arthropod agents for
control of arthropod pests in 196 countries or
islands have been made during the past 120
years,
 and more than 150 species of natural
enemies (parasitoids, predators and
pathogens) are currently commercially
available.
BIOLOGICAL CONTROL - INTRODUCTION
BIOLOGICAL CONTROL - INTRODUCTION

 Advantages of biological control for

farmers and consumers
 Why do farmers use biological control?
They mention the following advantages.
1. Strongly reduced exposure of grower and
spray personnel to toxic pesticides
2. Lack of residues on the marketed
product
BIOLOGICAL CONTROL - INTRODUCTION

3. Lack of phytotoxic effects on (young) plants,

and no premature abortion of flowers and fruit.
 As a result, often yield increases are obtained
when biological control is applied.

4. Release of natural enemies takes less time

and is much more pleasant than applying
chemicals in humid and warm greenhouses.
BIOLOGICAL CONTROL - INTRODUCTION
5. Release of natural enemies usually occurs shortly
after the planting period when the grower has
sufficient time to check for successful
development of natural enemies;
 thereafter the system is reliable for months with
only occasional checks;
 chemical control requires continuous attention.
6. Chemical control of some important agricultural
pests is difficult or impossible because of
pesticide resistance and other reasons
(application, timing etc.).
BIOLOGICAL CONTROL - INTRODUCTION

7. With biological control there is no safety period

between application and harvesting the
crop,
 so harvesting can be done at any moment
which is particularly important with strongly
fluctuating market prices;
 with chemical control one has to wait several
days before harvesting is allowed again.
BIOLOGICAL CONTROL - INTRODUCTION

8. Biological control is permanent: once a good

natural enemy - always a good natural enemy.
9. Biological control is appreciated by the general
public.
10. This may result in either a quicker sale of
crops produced under biological control,
• better price for these crops,
• or both.
BIOLOGICAL CONTROL - INTRODUCTION
 Consumers, politicians and policy makers add the
following important advantages this list of the
growers:
1. Low risk of food, water and environmental
pollution.
2. Contribution to sustainable food production.
3. Contribution to protection or even improvement of
biodiversity.
4. No pesticide residues on food.
BIOLOGICAL CONTROL DEFINITION

 Biologicalcontrol can be defined as the

use of an organism to reduce the
population density of another organism
and thus includes the control of
 animals,

 weeds and

 diseases.
BIOLOGICAL CONTROL - DEFINITION
 Biological control had been known to humans for
centuries,
 but the term was first used by Smith (1919) for
the use of natural enemies for insect control.
 De Bach (1964) defined biological control as
“the study and uses of parasites, predators and
pathogens for the regulation of host (pest)
densities”.
 He also distinguished between natural and
biological control.
BIOLOGICAL CONTROL - DEFINITION

 Naturalcontrol is "the maintenance

of a more or less fluctuating
population density of an organism
within certain definable upper and
lower limits over a period of time by
the actions of abiotic and/or biotic
environmental factors",
 whereas biological control is
"the action of parasites, predators, or
pathogens in maintaining another
organism's population density at a
lower average than would occur in
their absence".
BIOLOGICAL CONTROL - DEFINITION

 C. van den Bosch et al. (1982) modified

the terms somewhat and referred to:
 Applied biological control as the
"manipulation of natural enemies by man
to control pests";
 And Natural biological control as that
"control that occurs without man's
intervention".
BIOLOGICAL CONTROL - DEFINITION
BIOLOGICAL CONTROL - DEFINITION
BIOLOGICAL CONTROL - DEFINITION
 Later definitions were expanded by "non-
biological control purists" to include factors
such as
 host plant resistance,
 autosterilization,
 genetic manipulation of species (including
genetic engineering), cultural controls,
 non-conventional insecticides (insect growth
regulators, etc.), and
 transgenic plants.
BIOLOGICAL CONTROL - DEFINITION

 In this course these methods will not be

considered as "biological control."
 Biological control will be discussed as the
science that deals with the role that
natural enemies play in the regulation of
the numbers of their hosts, especially as
it applies to animal or plant pests