Delivery Systems and Protocols for Biopesticides

Biopesticides have little raison d’�tre unless they are biologically specific. Their perceived advantage of mammalian safety over chemicals has been eroded by new developments in pesticide chemistry (
1) and with possible rare exceptions, biopesticides will be targeted at “niche markets.” Research and development, therefore, will be reliant to a greater or lesser extent on public support, but unfortunately microbial research is usually funded piecemeal. Multidisciplinary teams are uncommon, but where opportunities have arisen to form such teams the results have often been rewarded with success, where “success” could be defined as: scientific novelty or elegance (with outputs in the scientific literature) or implementation with commercial products available for use. Although a successful outcome will be biology driven and must depend on sound science, the ultimate test must be the latter: we are in the business of providing technical solutions, not the production of “better mousetraps.” The opportunities for biopesticide development will be described in detail in this section of the volume; the greatest scope appears to be in the following broad categories (
2
):