Regulatory Issues in Commercialization of Bacillus thuringiensis-Based Biopesticides
The utility of biopesticides, as a component of integrated pest management (IPM), has won acceptance over the world. An entomopathogenic organism should be highly specific and effective against the target pest and should be successfully produced. Bacillus
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Regulatory Issues in Commercialization of Bacillus thuringiensis-Based Biopesticides Estibaliz Sansinenea
Abstract
The utility of biopesticides, as a component of integrated pest management (IPM), has won acceptance over the world. An entomopathogenic organism should be highly specific and effective against the target pest and should be successfully produced. Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) was discovered as a soil bacterium, which fulfills all these requirements and is being used as a biopesticide in agriculture, forestry, and mosquito control. In spite, biopesticides have many advantages as green pesticides and their use has had a slow growth, mainly because the farmers are less confident in selecting biopesticides over the synthetics. However, the global biopesticide market is substantially growing every year. The regulations about the pesticides have many concerns which do not apply to biopesticides, and these issues have been made difficult to introduce them to the market. Keywords
Biopesticides • Bacillus thuringiensis • Integrated pest management • Green pesticide • Entomopathogenic
E. Sansinenea (*) RoyanoFacultad de Ciencias Químicas, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, CP. 72570 Pue, Puebla, Mexico e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2016 H.B. Singh et al. (eds.), Agriculturally Important Microorganisms, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-2576-1_4
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4.1
Introduction
4.1.1
Crop Pests and Chemical Pesticides
A pest is an animal or insect that causes problems for people especially by damaging crops. Each species of crop plant is affected by different pest, which varies according to country and region. The natural selection has developed the different mechanisms by which pests affect the crop. These mechanisms are led by the competition between the pest and the plant, between different pest species (e.g., for food and space), and with other members of the ecological community (e.g., with predators or disease) and the abiotic environment. Pest damage can be caused directly (i.e., the plant is eaten by a pest) or it can be caused indirectly, but always there is a reduction in yield or quality due to competition for resources. When the production of agricultural crops is declining in yield, the farmers often expect a dramatic, magical treatment to make them green and healthy again, so that the productivity increases. Over years, chemical pesticides had been the major contributor against pests and diseases. The use of chemical pesticides was economically a viable strategy because they were cheap and effective. Such pesticides were adopted in the 1940s with the use of dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (DDT), organophosphates, and carbamate pesticides (Nicholson 2007). Their long-term use resulted in insecticide resistance. The contamination of soil and water and the harmful residues of the agricultural products are the most serious problems of the use of chemical pesticides causing tremendous damage to the environment, pest resistance, and lethal effects on n
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