BIOINSECTICIDES AS FUTURE MAINSTREAM PEST CONTROL AGENTS: OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES

Highlights

•Wide use of botanical insecticides is limited by the availability of certain plants.

•Studies are needed to improve RNAi efficiency and to assess their safety risk.

•Microbial insecticides are promising, but they only control a narrow range of pests.

•Multitarget approach should be a promising strategy in future pest control.

•Nanoformulation could enhance stability and control the release of bioinsecticides.

Abstract

Bioinsecticides are naturally-occurring substances from different sources that control insect pests. Ideal bioinsecticides should have low toxicity to non-target organisms. They should also be easily degraded in sewage treatment works and natural environments, highly effective in small quantities and affect target pests only. Public concerns about possible side-effects of synthetic pesticides have accelerated bioinsecticide research and development. However, to develop bioinsecticides into mainstream products, their high production costs, short shelf-life and often uncertain modes of action need to be considered. This review summarizes current progress on bioinsecticides which are categorized as biochemical insecticides and their derivatives, plant-incorporated protectants, and microbial bioinsecticides. The current constraints that prevent bioinsecticides from being widely used are discussed and future research directions are proposed.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

biochemical insecticide / bioinsecticide / microbial bioinsecticides / plant-incorporated protectant / RNA insecticide

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31872972, 31830076) and the Shenzhen Science and Technology Program (KQTD20180411143628272).

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Mingbo Qu, Hans Merzendorfer, Bernard Moussian, and Qing Yang declare that they have no conflicts of interest or financial conflicts to disclose. This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

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The Author(s) 2021. Published by Higher Education Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)