International Pest Control – September/October 2022 – Vol 64, Nr.5

IPCadmin | September 28, 2022

The death of Our Queen – or The Queen as President Macron so eloquently put it – is one of those rare events that you remember by where you were when you heard the news. Its finality provides a moment to reflect – on the nature of integrity, honesty, service, sacrifice, competence, and leadership. Like many others, IPC recognises Queen Elizabeth II’s lifetime of duty to the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth. She was born to rule an empire, but during her 70-year reign, former colonies asserted their independence while global inequities persisted. Her death bookends a mighty span of history at a time when decades happen in weeks.

COVER IMAGE: The official publication for High performance thermal fog generator TF-F 160/150 HD applying insecticide for mosquito control.
Picture by IGEBA.

This feels like a bumper edition of the magazine. The response to our special feature has squeezed our more regular sections which says a lot about the level of interest in biocontrol and integrated pest management. In our news section we kick off with a story about crop plants adapting to climate change. Not strictly pest control but, with change happening more rapidly in some parts of the world than others, it’s something that is going to become increasingly important – with weaker defences plants will be more susceptible to pests.

The desert locust genome has been published – one of those bits of knowledge that may take a few years before it is translated into new and more targeted control systems. The more ways you hear about something the better it seems – and even how you hear about it can affect yield – it’s the way you tell it!

Company news is once again full of acquisitions, a new name to learn – Envu complete with advice on how to pronounce it! Biobest has acquired Agronologica while Welsh Europest has been acquired by American Orkin. Certis and Rokill have both made acquisitions and BASF and Corteva have announced a collaboration.

This section ends with our Company Profile which celebrates the 40th Anniversary of IGEBA.

The Special Feature kicks off with an in-depth study of the control of the desert locust in Somalia from 2019 to 2021 using a biopesticide based on the fungus Metarhizium acridum. This is followed up by a look at the challenges for biocontrol, a consideration of the impact of the EU biocidal directive, a look at how we can control furniture beetle, a review of the difficulties of controlling mealybugs, the use of biorationals on cucumber and innovative rice yellow stem borer control. It is good to see how these products are now achieving results against a range of pests in the field.

In public heath we look at how understanding cockroach behaviour can improve control. There are 3,578 known species of mosquitoes – not sure it is good or bad news that “only” 331 are implicated in human disease. We close the public health section with an article on the use of essential oils to control many urban pests and in particular fleas.

In agriculture the focus turns to identifying the bottlenecks to IPM in Africa as well as looking at how powdery mildew of wheat has “successfully” spread around the world in the footsteps of humans starting as early as the stone and bronze ages. We finish in Horticulture with the winners of this year’s WUR Autonomous Greenhouse Challenge.

Our next issue will have a special section on the topic of Managing Storage Pests, so if you have a piece of research to report that would be of interest to our readers do let me know. Equally we welcome articles that will fit with any of our “standard” sections.

Chris Endacott, Editor International Pest Control magazine
Email Chris on editor@international-pest-control.com