Environmentally Friendly and Effective Alternative Approaches to Pest Management: Recent Advances and Challenges

Abstract

The most important requirement in sustainable agriculture is to significantly reduce the application of chemical pesticides, and environmentally friendly and effective approaches to pest management should be established to control the population size of dominant pests. To promote the development of promising plant protection measures, substantial efforts have been made regarding the identification of secondary botanical chemicals, pheromones, and RNA pesticides, as well as the optimization of the feeding conditions of biocontrol agents and the treatment methods of defensive phytohormones. Advances in these areas have revealed effective strategies for pest management, some of which have been widely implemented in agricultural practices. Although the effectiveness of some of these attempts is evidenced by their success in combating herbivore insects, significant challenges remain. Thus, this review summarizes the potential applications and challenges associated with the environmentally friendly and effective alternative strategies currently implemented in pest management. It is revealed that a combination of these approaches will significantly impede the evolution of pests, leading to maximum efficiency in pest management.

Keywords

• biopesticides
• hormone-triggered defenses
• biocontrol
• pheromones-based controls
• RNAi pesticides