What advantages do biopesticides have over traditional pesticides
Compared with chemical pesticides, biopesticides differ in many essential ways in terms of the sources of their active ingredients, their industrial production pathways, and the mechanisms and modes of action by which they kill pests and prevent disease. Biopesticides are better suited to an expanding share of use in future integrated pest management strategies. In summary, biopesticides mainly have the following advantages.
High selectivity, safe for humans and livestock
The biopesticide products currently developed for the market and successfully applied on a large scale act only on pests and diseases, and are generally relatively safe for humans, livestock and various beneficial organisms (including natural enemies of animals, natural enemies of insects, bees, pollinating insects and aquatic organisms such as fish and shrimp), with relatively little impact on non-target organisms.
Little impact on the ecological environment
The role of biopesticides in controlling harmful organisms mainly relies on the insecticidal, disease-preventing and growth-promoting functions of certain special microorganisms or their metabolites. Their active ingredients exist entirely in and originate from natural ecosystems, and their greatest characteristic is that they are extremely easily decomposed by sunlight, plants or various soil microorganisms, which is a normal material cycling pathway that comes from nature and returns to nature. Therefore, they can be considered safe for the natural ecological environment and pollution-free.
Inducing disease in pests
Some biopesticide varieties (entomopathogenic fungi, insect viruses, insect microsporidia, entomopathogenic nematodes, etc.) have the ability to transmit horizontally within pest populations or vertically through eggs, and under certain field conditions have the ability to colonize, spread and develop into epidemics. They can not only control the harmful organisms of the current year and generation, but also inhibit the harmful organism population of the offspring or the following year to a certain extent, with an obvious residual effect.
Can be produced and processed using agricultural and sideline products
At present, the domestic production and processing of biopesticides generally mainly uses natural renewable resources (such as agricultural and sideline products like corn, soybean cake, fish meal, wheat bran or certain plant bodies, etc.); the sources of raw materials are very extensive and the production cost is relatively low. Therefore, the production of biopesticides generally does not compete for raw materials with the production of chemically synthesized products that use non-renewable resources (such as oil, coal, natural gas, etc.).