Book Description

With the ever-increasing resistance of pests to pesticides and the growing concern over environmental pollution, it becomes evident that the problem of pest attack on crops cannot be solved by any one system. Separate controls need to be integrated into a complex measure, of which biological control would be one component. A rapidly growing factor in biological control is the harnessing of pathogens, showing particular progress have been selected from the major taxonomic divisions, as subjects for a series of compact chapters about their identification, practical use and toxins. Other chapters investigate the potential of genetic engineering; aspects of technology and integration such as formulation, application machinery, ecology and biostatistical modelling; safety and the insects' defence mechanisms; and impressions of use and research in the People's Republic of China. Each of the sixty authors and co-authors is a specialist, writing closely around his own field. Microbial Control of Insects and Mites the 1971 forbear of this book, assessed the subject up to 1970. As a broadly-based reference work, it revealed almost as many problems as solutions, and left inevitable gaps in coverage. This new work is a sequel and a supplement to the now critically-acclaimed initial work and not a revision or new edition: repetition of that material is stringently avoided. The present work covers new material appearing since 1970 and fills some of the gaps. In particular, the scope has been widened to include the use of competitors, inhibitors and diseases of plant pathogens as alternatives to chemical fungicides and bactericides. Although essentially a practical book, it delves deeply into fundamental information when an understanding of the subject is necessary to the reader. Each chapter attempts to probe the future, while the final chapter provides an analysis of the decade's strategy and progress. A painstaking conciseness exercised by contributors and editors has enabled this vast subject to be encompassed in a single volume. The work is aimed at a wide readership of pest control practitioners, research workers, students and lecturers seeking new information on advanced topics. It will interest insect pathologists, entomologists, plant pathologists, ecologists, biochemists and virologists as well as microbiologists generally. Those who have benefitted from its forbear will find this an essential complement to that work.