For more than 70 years, agriculture’s response to pesticide resistance has been to find new pesticides in a never-ending race to keep up with evolving pests.
Now, researchers are proposing a new way to get off this treadmill as farmers embrace the ongoing green revolution in pest control by switching to biopesticides derived from natural organisms.
The evolution of biopesticide resistance—a critical tool in the development of sustainable crop protection—has enormous implications for global food security as the world’s population grows.
In an attempt to address this emerging challenge, researchers have deployed principles from basic evolutionary ecological science and proposed a practical framework for managing the risks of developing biopesticide resistance.
They suggest that farmers can help manage the risks of resistance by planting more diverse crops and using multiple biopesticides.
The research was funded by the Newton Fund, a joint international partnership between the Biotechnology and Life Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) in the UK and the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) in Brazil, as well as the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet).
Scientists from Stirling’s Faculty of Natural Sciences, working with colleagues from the University of Gothenburg and São Paulo State University, synthesized existing biopesticide research and argued that the evolution of resistance is already occurring and is likely to become widespread as biopesticide use increases.
Dr Matthew Tinsley, senior lecturer in biological and environmental sciences at the University of Stirling, said: “People have been silenced – they think that because biopesticides are derived from natural sources it will be harder for pests to develop resistance, but we still need to worry about pest resistance to these new agents.
“The development time for biopesticides is five to ten years, so if we wait to act, we will lose these new agents because the pests have already evolved.”
Dr Rosie Mangan, a PhD student at the University of Stirling, added: ‘New approaches to dealing with resistance are needed for these plant protection products to avoid the same treadmill of invention and loss as happened with chemical pesticides.
“Our view is that farmers can help manage the risks of resistance by planting more diverse crops and using multiple biopesticides. This will reduce the spread of resistance and help maintain the effectiveness of biopesticides in the long term.”
The new paper, “Increasing ecological heterogeneity may constrain the evolution of biopesticide resistance,” is published in Trends in ecology and evolution. It is part of the wider Stirling-led ENDORSE (Enhancing Diversity to Overcome Evolutionary Resistance) project.