What role do viral insecticides play in controlling cotton bollworm
1. An important feature of insect viruses in pest control is their host specificity. In integrated pest management systems, this is an ideal control method choice for controlling pests (not a blanket kill-all), and the potential of beneficial insects in the entire ecosystem is utilized. Viral pesticides participating in biological control are a means of ecological management, with the purpose...
1. An important feature of insect viruses in pest control is their host specificity. In integrated pest management systems, this is an ideal control method choice for controlling pests (not a blanket kill-all), and the potential of beneficial insects in the entire ecosystem is utilized. Viral pesticides participating in biological control are a means of ecological management; the purpose is not to completely eliminate pests, but to keep the population of host pests on which natural enemies depend below the level allowed by the economic threshold, restore a healthy farmland ecological cycle, and ultimately obtain the greatest benefit.
2. The greatest advantage of using viral insecticides to control pests is that target fields sprayed with viral insecticides not only have an infecting and pathogenic effect on the current generation of target pests, but also, through the feces of infected larvae, adults, eggs and dead larval bodies, can infect the next generation of larvae; the virus proliferates in the host population and even spreads to form an epidemic, keeping the target host at a low level for several years.
3. Viral insecticides have the advantages of general biological pesticides: they do not pollute the environment, do not harm natural enemies, are highly safe for humans and livestock, and pests are not prone to developing resistance. In addition, recent studies have shown that viruses have a certain "weakening" effect on host insects, which can reduce the flying ability of infected hosts, decrease egg production and hatching rates, and cause degeneration of other physiological functions, raising their natural mortality rate; resistance to some pesticides is also significantly reduced, which is beneficial for integrated pest management.
4. People have fully recognized that protecting the ecological environment and the sustainable development of agriculture have become the two central issues facing humanity in the 21st century. The core connotation and basic characteristic of biological control is its compatibility with the ecological environment and its unity with sustainable development. Biological control is the inevitable result of human social progress and technological development. Insect viral insecticides are precisely in line with the requirements and development of the times, and are a powerful weapon for modern agricultural engineering aimed at organic food.