The state of commercial augmentative biological control: plenty of natural enemies, but a frustrating lack of uptake

By J. C. Lenteren. BioControl (Dordrecht), 2012

957 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Augmentative biological control concerns the periodical release of natural enemies. In commercial augmentative biological control, natural enemies are mass-reared in biofactories for release in large numbers to obtain an immediate control of pests. The history of commercial mass production of natural enemies spans a period of roughly 120 years. It has been a successful, environmentally and economically sound alternative for chemical pest control in crops like fruit orchards, maize, cotton, sugar cane, soybean, vineyards and greenhouses. Currently, augmentative biological control is in a critical phase, even though during the past decades it has moved from a cottage industry to professional production. Many efficient species of natural enemies have been discovered and 230 are commercially available today. The industry developed quality control guidelines, mass production, shipment and release methods as well as adequate guidance for farmers. However, augmentative biological control is applied on a frustratingly small acreage. Trends in research and application are reviewed, causes explaining the limited uptake are discussed and ways to increase application of augmentative biological control are explored.

Subfields: Insect Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0dab4396df5175ca2f889f1b3b3518a006ccae3c

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Citations in the corpus

Prospects for predatory mirid bugs as biocontrol agents of aphids in sweet peppers (2015, background): “The three species tested in this study showed a higher predation rate and preference for smaller prey instars, which was also observed by Valderrama et al. (2007) for N. tenuis and by Fantinou et al. (2009) for M. pygmaeus.”
Biological control using invertebrates and microorganisms: plenty of new opportunities (2018, background): “…control of pests in crops with a short production cycle (inundative biological control) or for control of pests during several generations in crops with a long production cycle (seasonal inoculative biological control) (Cock et al. 2010; Lorito et al. 2010; Parnell et al. 2016; van Lenteren 2012).”
Use of predatory mites in commercial biocontrol: current status and future prospects (2018, background): “In 1997, the worldwide turnover of natural enemies was only about US$ 30 million (Bolckmans 1999), this increased to about US$ 50 million in 2000 (van Lenteren 2007) and to about US$ 400 million in 2010 (van Lenteren 2012); in 2014 it was about US$ 600 million.”
Exotic biological control agents: A solution or contribution to arthropod invasions? (2016, background): “Some major examples of uses of augmentation include the egg parasitoids of the genus Trichogramma and the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis for control of pests in field crops and releases of many different species of natural enemies to control many pests in greenhouse cultures (van Lenteren 2012).”
Chemical Ecology of Egg Parasitoids Associated with True Bugs (2012, background): “Accurate knowledge of parasitoid chemical ecology will be important in all phases of biocontrol and integrated pest management [82]; important elements toward implementation include procedures for selection of egg parasitoids, evaluation of their specificity [27, 32, 71], risk assessment of new intr”
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It is time to bridge the gap between exploring and exploiting: prospects for utilizing intraspecific genetic variation to optimize arthropods for augmentative pest control – a review (2017, background): “This is reflected by the growing number of species of natural enemies available on the market, the development of technologies to distribute natural enemies, and the refinement of biological control, for example, by combining natural enemies (van Lenteren, 2003, 2012).”
Concepts for biocontrol in marine environments: is there a way forward? (2015, neutral): “This is a common terrestrial strategy (van Lenteren 2012), with a few marine examples in natural (Atalah et al. 2013b; Mumby et al. 2011; Thibaut and Meinesz 2000) and artificial habitats (Atalah et al. 2014; Enright et al. 1984; Ross et al. 2004).”
An overview on the natural enemies of Rhynchophorus palm weevils, with focus on R. ferrugineus (2014, background): “As evidenced by the increased biological control, several popular alien biological control agents have recently been replaced by indigenous ones (van Lenteren, 2012). Nevertheless, as found by Cito et al. (2014), also an indigenous fungus such as M.”