Biopesticides and Agrochemicals

• Biopesticides offer ecological aids along the food value chain
• Biopesticides provide a lot of chances and merits to growers, buyers, dealers, consultants, retailers, and consumers

Biopesticides

• Biopesticides enhance pest control in an ecofriendly manner
• Biopesticides maintain production sustainability over a long period of time without deteriorating the environment
• Biopesticide types, application methods, dosage and mechanisms of action, are discussed

Agrochemicals

• Excessive and inappropriate use of synthetic chemicals has resulted in adverse and irreparable effects on the environment
• Agrochemical use caused contamination of soils, agricultural crops and groundwater
• Continuous dependence on chemical pesticides to manage pest problems has aggravated environmental decline
• Chemical pesticide use has caused serious health effects on agricultural employees and rural communities
• Pesticide residues increase food safety fears and pose-trade inhibitions for export crops
• Agrochemicals significantly amassed in plant parts and exaggerated the morphological, anatomical, physiological and biochemical procedures of the plants

Pests and Pesticides

• Management of pests which includes insects, pathogens, weeds and rodents, etc., will remain to play a serious role in supporting production and efficiency in Indian agriculture
• The use of synthetic chemical pesticides had been augmented extensively for dipping the assessed 45% gross crop loss due to pests and diseases, amounting to around Rs. 290 billion per annum
• Pest induced loss is on the rise despite increasing usage of pesticides
• Hundreds and thousands types of chemicals are used for agricultural intensification to feed an ever growing population

Shifting focus in agriculture

• Consciousness of the undesirable effects of chemicals have compulsory agriculturists to shift focus to more dependable, maintainable and environment friendly methods of insect pest control, "the biopesticides"
• Biopesticides are pesticides derived from natural materials like animals, plants, bacteria, fungi, and certain minerals
• Biopesticides are aimed to suppress or reduce the noxious pests irrespective of any side effects to the humans and environment
• In view of demand and the government's exertions to alleviate climate change, biopesticides are going to play an imperative role in pest management programs

Issues with chemical pesticides

• Excessive and inappropriate use of chemical pesticides concerns the presence of pesticide residue in food
• Many pesticides currently being used have a tendency to survive in plants for a long time and they also go into the food chain
• The problem of pesticide residue is already a serious threat to environment and human health
• Excessive use of chemical pesticides in agriculture is a serious cause of concern
• It is imperative that substitute environmental friendly approaches of plant protections are accepted, such as integrated pest management (IPM) methods, comprising the use of biofertilizers and biopesticides

Pesticides

• Pesticides are substances designed/formulated to kill, repel, or control certain forms of plant or animal life that are considered to be pests
• Pesticides include herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, bactericides, and rodenticides
• People are bare to squat levels of pesticide residues through their diets because of the prevalent use of agricultural chemicals in food production
• Pest management methods have changed over years and inorganic chemical were swapped by synthetic organic chemicals, and now biopesticides establish a noteworthy part of pest management technology
• Due to its adverse impacts, the new and equally important tools in pest management with microbial pesticides and transgenic crops are likely to play important crop protection roles

Effects of Pesticides on Living System

• Pesticides are the only toxic constituents released deliberately into our environment to execute living things
• Toxic pesticides have been a common practice around the world, almost universally used not only in agricultural fields, but also in homes, parks, schools, buildings, forests, and roads
• Pesticides can be found in the air, the food, and water
• Blind use and heavy exposure of living and non-living systems to toxic chemicals cause huge problems and unavoidable issues
• Toxic chemicals are linked to systems causing headaches, nausea, cancer, reproductive harm, and endocrine disruption
• The alternative to replace these synthetic chemicals is biopesticides to provide security to all systems on earth

Acute and Chronic effects of pesticides

• Acute effects are short term or immediate effects and they include nerve, skin, and eye irritation and damage
• Acute effects of pesticides include headaches, dizziness, nausea, fatigue, and systemic poisoning which can sometimes be dramatic, and even occasionally fatal
• Chronic effects are long term effects and may occur years after even minimal exposure to pesticides in the environment
• Chronic effects may result from the pesticide residues which we ingest through our food and water
• Chronic effects occur through biological magnification

Biopesticides - Safety to Living System

• Biopesticides are pesticides that include insect pheromones, plant extracts, oils, plant growth regulators and insect growth regulators
• Microbial pesticides includes bacteria, virus, fungus, and other less common microorganisms, having huge benefits like less toxicity, quick biodegradability and target to specific pest and maintain ecological balance
• Emergent safe, operative biopesticide products needs holistic thinking and multi-disciplinary methods to founding safety which is a contest for the biopesticide industry
• Biopesticides fall along a spectrum of toxicity, at one end biopesticides are extremely narrow in focusing single species in a specific window of its life cycle while at other end biopesticide are wider in effect especially when security to living system is concerned
• Organisms such as Virus, fungi, bacteria etc. are mass-produced using either a submerged liquid fermentation or solid-substrate fermentation processes highly specific to a bio-pesticide organism, and are often developed in a custom designed medium
• Formulations create an end product by blending the microbial component with carriers and adjuvant for better protection from unfavorable environments, enhanced survival of the bio-agent, controlled rates of release, as well as improved bioactivity, shelf life, and stability`

Scope of Biopesticides

• Biopesticides are anything that kills a pest and is biological in origin
• The origin of the active ingredient of a biopesticide is natural not synthetic
• They are highly specific affecting only the targeted pest or closely related pests and do not harm humans or beneficial organisms, while chemical pesticides are broad spectrum and known to affect non-target organisms including predators, parasites and other beneficial organisms
• Use of biopesticides as a component of integrated pest management (IPM) programs can greatly decrease the use of conventional (chemical) pesticides, while achieving almost the same level of crop yield
• Biopesticides have an edge over chemical pesticides like squat research outlay, faster rate of product development as well as flexible registration procedure

Biopesticides and Mode of Action

• Although the biochemical pesticides are closely related category to conventional chemical pesticides, but are distinguished from synthetic chemicals by their non-toxic mode of action toward target organisms and their natural occurrence
• The active ingredient can be a single molecule or a mixture of molecules, such as a naturally happening mixture including a plant essential oil, or a mixture of very anatomically alike molecules called isomers in the case of insect pheromones
• While all active ingredients of biochemical pesticides occur in nature, the active ingredient in the product may be a synthetic analogue to the naturally occurring substance
• As many of the active ingredients in this category of biopesticides are synthetic, the full range of green chemistry principles should be applied to the development of the active ingredient and the biochemical pesticide product

Insect Pheromones

• The insect pheromones are chemicals employed by an insect to interconnect with other members of the same species
• Semi chemical is definite as a message-bearing substance produced by a plant or animal, or a synthetic analogue of that substance, which arouses behavior response in individuals of the same or other species
• Semi chemicals are used for various functions comprising attracting others to a known food source or trail, locating a mate, or transfer an alarm
• Insect sex pheromones are used in pest management
• Insect pheromones themselves do not kill a target pest
• Two common uses for pheromones in pest management includes: to entice an insect to a trap comprising a lethal pesticide or to disturb mating

Other bio constituents and effects

• Plant extracts and oils are specific chemicals or mixtures of chemical components derived from a plant and are most often used as insecticides, but can also be used as herbicides
• Plant growth regulators are chemicals that alter the growth of a plant or plant part, or promote certain biological changes in the plant, which can be synthetic that imitator naturally occurring plant hormones, or they may be natural hormones that were mined from plant tissue
• Insect growth regulators are chemical compounds that alter the growth and development of insects and are three key types of insect growth regulators, each with a distinct mode of action: juvenile hormone-based insecticides, preciseness interfere, and chitin synthesis inhibitors
• Microbial pesticides originate from logically-happening or genetically changed bacteria, fungi, algae, viruses or protozoans where bacterial biopesticides privilege about 74% of the market, fungal biopesticides, about 10%, viral biopesticides, 5%; predator biopesticides, 8%; and “other” biopesticides, 3%

Virus and Microbial Biopesticides

• Viruses as potent biocontrol agent (baculoviruses) are considered to be future of biopesticides because of their obligatory nature and host specificity
• Baculoviruses are parasitic replicating microscopic elements where two main families of baculoviruses contain granulosis virus and nucleopolyhedrosis virus
• The use of other organisms like protozoa, nematodes are used in different parts of the world, with nematodes that are successfully used to control insect pests