Controlling chemicals can bring a number of benefits to society and industry by making production and supply chains cleaner and safer, and reducing the risk of costly accidents. It also provides incentives to develop safer chemicals and safer and more resource-efficient production methods. Overuse of Pest Control Chemicals Promotes Evolution of Pesticide Resistance. When pesticides are applied, people who are more resistant are more likely to survive.
If their resistance to the chemical has a genetic basis, they will in turn pass on these genes to their progeny so that the population becomes more resistant over time. In other words, chemical pest control acts as a type of artificial selection for pesticide resistance. According to Essential Environment, by 2000, there were more than 2,700 known cases of resistance of 540 pest species to more than 300 pesticides, including the diamond-backed moth and the green peach aphid, which are agricultural pests. One of the main advantages of chemical pest control is its effectiveness.
Most chemicals act very quickly and, when properly selected, are very effective in eliminating pests. Chemicals can be used to control or kill specific pests on a farm. Nowadays, a combination of several products is generally required to control several pests because almost all of the products allowed are selective and therefore only control a limited range of pests. Microbes, microorganisms that can be used for biological control, can make plants healthy and control pests and diseases.
In this situation, higher and higher concentrations of the chemical are needed to kill the pest until the pesticide becomes useless. In classical biological control, natural predators, parasites, or pathogens of a pest are imported into an area to protect a crop or livestock. These are chemical pesticides that are distributed in powder form and require mixing with water. Promotes the use of safer alternatives, such as biocontrol, which uses natural enemies to control pests, and cultural control practices that modify the growing environment to reduce unwanted pests.
Previous studies have already indicated that periphytic biofilm can control chemical flows of calcium, alkalinity and P from sediment to overlying water (Woodruff et al. Pesticide regulation through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has changed the availability of chemical controls over the past two decades. These controls are often administered as emergency measures to suppress blooms that threaten aquaculture facilities or other spatially restricted regions, and their use can significantly accelerate the disappearance of a bloom or eliminate toxins from the water.
Another problem with using chemicals to control an organism's population is that a pest can become resistant to a pesticide. A wide variety of pest control chemicals are on sale in many home and garden stores; by choosing the right product, you can minimize the damage that a particular type of problem pest inflicts on your plants and grow a healthier, more attractive garden. A number of beneficial microorganisms can also be used to improve plant health and control pests and diseases. In addition to chemical and biological control, in recent years there has also been a growing interest in the possibility of controlling pests using biotechnological methods.
Although microbes are said to form a pesticide, their use is actually an example of biological pest control. Biopesticides are chemicals, but they are produced from or by living things and are considered safer for humans than chemical pesticides. To be more elaborate, some positive alternative methods have already been developed, such as physical barriers, cultivation practices, genetic improvements, semiochemical use and biological control options with beneficial insects and mycopesticides (Hubert de Bon et al. .
