Balancing the integration of biopesticides in potato pest management and the ongoing threat of insecticide resistance

The evolution of pesticide resistance continues to be an evolving problem that often prevents the sustainable management of agroecosystems. Management efforts to control pesticide resistance continue to fail, and for some pests, novel chemical control agents have begun to fail more rapidly. Pesticide resistance management requires a set of durable principles, yet resistance evolution defies many of the long-held assumptions of simple models. Given that most insecticide resistance traits are quantitative, predicting rates of resistance evolution is becoming increasingly complex. Environmental change coupled with adaptive phenological responses to long-term patterns of pest control require greater precision in scheduling pest management. There are new opportunities to develop precision resistance management that allow farmers to anticipate and mitigate the effects of pesticide resistance evolution. In this presentation we outline steps toward the development of sustainable pest management tools that can work at landscape scales to focus on control of the Colorado potato beetle, Leptinotarsa decemlineata.