Pesticide selectivity and biopesticides

Greenhouse Management
2023.09.25

Pesticides — in this case, insecticides and miticides — are widely used in greenhouse production systems to manage insect and mite pest populations and maintain populations below plant-damaging levels. Some greenhouse producers are minimizing the use of broad-spectrum pesticides and are using more selective or narrow-spectrum pesticides.

Biopesticides, in general, are considered selective pesticides, although based on the targeted insect and mite pests on commercially available product labels, this is not always the case. Biopesticides are types of pesticides derived from natural materials, such as animals, plants, bacteria and certain minerals. There are three major classes of biopesticides.

Microbial pesticides are used in greenhouse production systems to manage certain insect and/or mite pests with the main organisms being entomopathogenic fungi and bacteria. The characteristics of microbial pesticides include: 1) short residual activity, 2) sensitive to ultra-violet light degradation and rainfall, 3) primarily active on the young (immature) stages of insect pests, 4) generally less harmful to biological control agents, such as, parasitoids and predators than broad-spectrum conventional pesticides, 5) low mammalian toxicity, and 6) usually take longer to kill insect pests than conventional pesticides.

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