Use of botanical insecticides for sustainable agriculture: Future perspectives

Abstract

Recent decades have witnessed major growth in the use of agrochemicals worldwide,for maximizing the food production for a rapidly growing human population. However, the indiscriminate use of these substances especially the pesticides has led to the accumulation of toxic residues in food, soil, air, and water, as well as the development of resistance in pests. Moreover, pesticides affect soil enzymes, which are essential catalysts that govern soil quality. In order to meet the food security, it is necessary to produce more food, sustainably and safely, in a diminishing area of available arable land and with decreased water resources. Given this situation, there is an increased interest in the use of alternative substances to synthetic agrochemicals that present less risk to the environment and human health while increasing the food safety. Promising results have been obtained using compounds derived from aromatic plants for the control of agricultural pests. Such compounds of botanical origin can be highly effective, with multiple mechanisms of action, while at the same time having low toxicity towards nontarget organisms. However, the large-scale application of these substances for pest control is limited by their poor stability and other technological issues. In this backdrop, the present work discusses perspectives for the use of compounds of botanical origin, as well as strategies employing the encapsulation techniques that can contribute to the development of systems for use in sustainable agricultural practices.

Scope for non-crop plants to promote conservation biological control of crop pests and serve as sources of botanical insecticides

“…A study in Nicaragua found that plots sprayed with synthetic insecticides had low numbers of generalist predators including spiders compared with a no insecticides application treatment 7 . The current study therefore supports the notion that aqueous plant extracts are relatively harmless to natural enemies [49][50][51] and can be integrated with biological pest control unlike synthetic insecticides such as Attack which has deleterious effects on natural enemies. This insecticide (Attack) is a semi-synthetic derivative of the natural product abamectin in the avermectin family 52,53 .…”

Essential Oils Extracted from Different Species of the Lamiaceae Plant Family as Prospective Bioagents against Several Detrimental Pests

“…Essential oils exhibit a wide spectrum of pesticidal activities from lethal to sublethal effects against a wide range of insects and mites [7,24,28]. Pesticidal effects of essential oils extracted from different plant families such as Apiaceae, Asteraceae, Chenopodiaceae, Cupressaceae, Lamiaceae, Lauraceae, Myrtaceae, Zingiberaceae, Umbelliferae, and Geraniaceae have been documented [7,9,29,30].…”

Polyphenol-Rich Purple Corn Pericarp Extract Adversely Impacts Herbivore Growth and Development

“…Continuing the long quest for identifying bioactive compounds with insecticidal/insect deterrent activity [49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56], we hypothesized that the pericarp extracts may also negatively affect herbivore growth and development. We tested this hypothesis using the tobacco hornworm caterpillar (Manduca sexta L.), a model herbivore for examining growth and development traits (easy to rear in lab with short lifecycle and distinct growth stages) [8,9,57,58].…”