review · Frontiers in Microbiology
This review examines the significant environmental and health risks associated with synthetic pesticides, which are widely used to enhance crop yields but cause harm to aquatic life, soil, and human health through biomagnification, leading to various diseases. It highlights the urgent need for sustainable alternatives. The paper proposes biopesticides, including microbial pesticides, phytopesticides, and nanobiopesticides, as promising solutions. These organic alternatives are presented as cheaper, environmentally friendly, and sustainable, offering specific action, diverse mechanisms, and enhanced activity with lower risks to human health and the environment. The review also explores strategies to improve the acceptability and commercialisation of these biopesticides for crop protection, human health, and integration into pest management systems.
Finding safer pest control methods is crucial for protecting ecosystems and human health. This research highlights sustainable biopesticide alternatives that can reduce reliance on harmful synthetic chemicals, promoting healthier agriculture and environments for everyone.
This research identifies biopesticides as a promising alternative for pest control in agriculture, offering benefits for crop protection and human health. The abstract explicitly aims to improve the acceptability and commercial usage of microbial, phyto, and nanobiopesticides, suggesting a focus on near-market application for farmers and integrated pest management systems. It indicates a pathway for developing and deploying more sustainable pest control products.
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Over the years, synthetic pesticides like herbicides, algicides, miticides, bactericides, fumigants, termiticides, repellents, insecticides, molluscicides, nematicides, and pheromones have been used to improve crop yield. When pesticides are used, the over-application and excess discharge into water bodies during rainfall often lead to death of fish and other aquatic life. Even when the fishes still live, their consumption by humans may lead to the biomagnification of chemicals in the body system and can cause deadly diseases, such as cancer, kidney diseases, diabetes, liver dysfunction, eczema, neurological destruction, cardiovascular diseases, and so on. Equally, synthetic pesticides harm the soil texture, soil microbes, animals, and plants. The dangers associated with the use of synthetic pesticides have necessitated the need for alternative use of organic pesticides (biopesticides), which are cheaper, environment friendly, and sustainable. Biopesticides can be sourced from microbes (e.g., metabolites), plants (e.g., from their exudates, essential oil, and extracts from bark, root, and leaves), and nanoparticles of biological origin (e.g., silver and gold nanoparticles). Unlike synthetic pesticides, microbial pesticides are specific in action, can be easily sourced without the need for expensive chemicals, and are environmentally sustainable without residual effects. Phytopesticides have myriad of phytochemical compounds that make them exhibit various mechanisms of action, likewise, they are not associated with the release of greenhouse gases and are of lesser risks to human health compared to the available synthetic pesticides. Nanobiopesticides have higher pesticidal activity, targeted or controlled release with top-notch biocompatibility and biodegradability. In this review, we examined the different types of pesticides, the merits, and demerits of synthetic pesticides and biopesticides, but more importantly, we x-rayed appropriate and sustainable approaches to improve the acceptability and commercial usage of microbial pesticides, phytopesticides, and nanobiopesticides for plant nutrition, crop protection/yield, animal/human health promotion, and their possible incorporation into the integrated pest management system.
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DOI: 10.3389/fmicb.2023.1040901
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