Altering insect behavior for enhanced crop protection

To ensure food security for the growing global population—expected to exceed 9 billion by 2050—effective, sustainable methods of crop protection from pests are vital. The twentieth century saw the rise and fall of the seeming “silver bullet” solutions presented by broad-spectrum chemical pesticides, whose initial success and resulting overuse were followed by the evolution of resistance in many pest species and growing concerns over their health and environmental impacts. Semiochemical-based control (control through alteration of pest behavior) offers a safe, efficacious, and more selective means of crop protection than conventional insecticides, through several methods. Mating disruption interferes with insects’ ability to locate breeding partners, reducing reproductive success, the size of the pest population, and its impact on crops. Another category of semiochemicals useful for pest control are repellents, including non-host plant volatiles and anti-aggregation pheromones. Repellents can be applied to host plants to dissuade insect feeding or as a barrier treatment to prevent pests from invading crop fields. Attractant semiochemicals can be combined with small amounts of pesticide to create an attract-and-kill formulation, enhancing the impact of the pesticide while reducing the quantity of chemical applied and the risk to non-targets. Semiochemicals can also alter the behavior of beneficial insects like pollinators, increasing the time honeybees spend pollinating crops or keeping them away from areas treated with chemicals that might harm them. The range of effects semiochemicals can have on insect behavior present a diverse variety of opportunities to protect crops without continued reliance on potentially hazardous, resistance-prone conventional pesticides.