Environmental and Regulatory Sustainability of Biopesticides

Abstract

This chapter is concerned with an issue of central importance to environmental sustainability. Plant protection products are necessary to ensure security of food supply, but as toxic substances they also pose a series of potential challenges to the environment, including water pollution and possible threats to human and animal health and hence to biodiversity. This is why they are heavily regulated.

Conventional synthetic products are becoming less available and less popular. Many older products have been withdrawn for regulatory or commercial reasons. Others become subject to heritable resistance. The rate at which new, safer chemicals are being made available is very low. This is caused by a fall in the discovery rate of new active molecules and the increasing costs of registration. This creates a need for the use of alternative products as part of a more general Integrated Pest Management (IPM) strategy. Biopesticides are not necessarily substitutes for synthetic pesticides and are often used alongside synthetics as complementary products.