| Popis: |
Plant diseases need to be controlled to maintain the quality and abundance of food, feed, and fiber produced by growers around the world. Different approaches may be used to prevent, mitigate, or control plant diseases. Beyond good agronomic and horticultural practices, growers often rely heavily on chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Such inputs to agriculture have contributed significantly to the spectacular improvements in crop productivity and quality over the past 100 years. However, the environmental pollution caused by excessive use and misuse of agrochemicals, as well as fear-mongering by some opponents of pesticides, has led to considerable changes in people’s attitudes toward the use of pesticides in agriculture. Consequently, some pest management researchers have focused their efforts on developing alternative inputs to synthetic chemicals for controlling pests and diseases. Among these alternatives biological control is the major emerging tool for disease control in sustainable agriculture. Biological control offers a novel approach when applied either alone or in combination with other management practices. Biocontrol and chemicals are important tools in IPM strategy wherein agrochemicals applied by any of the methods (seed treatment, soil application, and foliar spray) will ultimately reach soil and interact with the biocontrol agents. These agrochemicals drastically affect the growth, reproduction, and survivability of biocontrol agents in a particular cropping system and thereby on their biocontrol efficacy. The available literature on the effect of agrochemicals on biocontrol agents revealed that most of the agrochemicals (fungicides, insecticides, fertilizers, and herbicides) are reported to have adverse effect on the soil microflora including biocontrol agents. The need-based and judicious application of agrochemicals, checking the compatibility between the agrochemicals and biocontrol agents and developing the new pesticide resistant strains of biocontrol agents using biotechnology tool, will help to address the above Problems. |
