Natural products for plant protection

Abstract

The advantage applying natural products, such as a secondary metabolites, in plant protection is shortly presented. Acceptable solutions for the enhanced ecological criteria, which are requested by the users of pesticides and consumers of agricultural goods, could be the replacement of classical pesticides by natural products in plant protection. Some natural products are already in use as insecticides, herbicides and fungicides because new biotechnological processes, fermentation and biotransformations provide procedures for their industrial production. In addition to biotechnical processes natural compounds possessing pesticide activities are also prepared by chemical synthesis. An active secondary metabolite must first be isolated from natural sauces and then, based on biological toxicological and ecological studies, acceptable compounds are selected for laboratory and industrial chemical synthesis. Several compounds possessing insecticidal, herbicidal and fungicidal activities, which have been successfully applied for plan protection are presented.

Keywords

• natural products
• secondary metabolites
• agrochemicals
• herbicides
• insecticides
• fungicides
• environmental protection