China Strengthens Development of Biological Pesticides

According to incomplete statistics, more than 50 effective components of biological pesticides have been registered in China, and China has 161 enterprises engaged in the production of biological pesticide technical and more than 2 489 formulation producers. However, China’s biological pesticide sector still faces many problems such as less dominant varieties, low level of formulations, high cost, unstable control effect, immature field integrated application technology and insufficient cultivation target, restricting the promotion and application of biological control technology and biological pesticides to a great extent.
   The biology industry is one of the seven emerging industries in China, and the biological pesticide sector is a part of the biology industry that attracts the attention of many investors. The development of China’s chemical pesticides has encountered the patent bottleneck. China has rich biological pesticide resources, and the development cost of biological pesticides is much lower than that of chemical pesticides. At present, the development cost of biological pesticides is only 1/40 of that of chemical pesticides, and the registration fee of biological pesticides is also lower.
   However, biological pesticides have not yet been widely used in China. In domestic market and biological pesticide enterprises, there is an urgent need for both new types of biological pesticides and integrated biological control technologies, including the biological control technologies as well as new biological pesticide varieties for staple crops, the biological control technologies as well as new biological pesticide varieties for soil borne disease control and the biological control technologies as well as new biological pesticide varieties for sucking pest control. There is a huge demand for new biological pesticide formulations with environmental friendly and long-term effect.
   To solve these problems, China’s biological pesticide sector should also depend on the cooperation and joint efforts among government, enterprises, scientific research institutions and application, subject to jointly upgrade China’s independent innovation and industrialization ability in biological control technology as well as biological pesticide sectors. Biological pesticides will play an increasingly important role in promoting green food production and guaranteeing agricultural efficiency, farmer’s income and the sustainable development of agriculture.
   To promote the rapid development of biological pesticides, players should highlight the following aspects:
   (1) Strengthening the applied basic research, such as action mechanism (activator and bacterial pesticide) and epidemiology (fungal and viral insecticides).
   (2) Developing the biological pesticide dominant varieties with market competitiveness for the control of the main diseases and pests like sucking pests, soil borne diseases (nematode) and leaf diseases (downy mildew and botrytis cinerea).
   (3) Making breakthroughs in the generic technology bottleneck of biological pesticide industrialization, and producing products with high effectiveness and low cost.
   (4) Highlighting the health cultivation concept of crops, integrating biological pesticide resources, meeting the needs of pest control disease resistance, growth promotion and stress tolerance for crops, and achieving the goals of ecological, environmental protection and increase of production and income.
   (5) The post genomic era and industrial biotechnology are the technical basis for the breakthrough development of biological pesticides.
   (6) Formulation technology should reflect the characteristics of multiple factors, like multi-element fertilizers and additives.
   (7) Strict product standards with list-type itemization of effective components, content and standard reaction effect can facilitate the implementation of supervision.