Botanicals in Pest Management: Current Status and Future Perspectives

Abstract

The problems caused by synthetic pesticides and their residues have increased the need for effective biodegradable pesticides with greater selectivity. Alternative strategies have included the search for new types of pesticides which are often effective against a limited number of specific target species, are biodegradable into nontoxic products and are suitable for use in integrated pest management programs. The natural plant products derived from plants effectively meet this criterion and have enormous potential to influence modern agrochemical research. When extracted from plants, these chemicals are referred to as botanicals. The use of botanical pesticides is now emerging as one of the prime means to protect crops and their products and the environment from pesticide pollution. Botanicals degrade more rapidly than most chemical pesticides, and are, therefore, considered relatively environment friendly and less likely to kill beneficial pests than synthetic pesticides with longer environmental retention. Most of the botanical pesticides generally degrade with in few days and some times with in a few hours, these pesticides needs to be applied more frequently. More frequent application coupled with higher costs of production makes botanicals more expensive to use than conventional pesticides. Moreover, in spite of wide recognition that many plants possess pesticidal properties, only a handful of pest control products obtained from plants (pyrethrum, neem, rotenone) are in use because commercialization of botanicals is hindered by several issues discussed in this chapter.