Abstract
Biological control is considered as a promising alternative to pesticide and plant resistance to manage plant diseases, but a better understanding of the interaction of its natural and societal functions is necessary for its endorsement. The introduction of biological control agents (BCAs) alters the interaction among plants, pathogens, and environments, leading to biological and physical cascades that influence pathogen fitness, plant health, and ecological function. These interrelationships generate a landscape of tradeoffs among natural and social functions of biological control, and a comprehensive evaluation of its benefits and costs across social and farmer perspectives is required to ensure the sustainable development and deployment of the approach. Consequently, there should be a shift of disease control philosophy from a single concept that only concerns crop productivity to a multifaceted concept concerning crop productivity, ecological function, social acceptability, and economical accessibility. To achieve these goals, attempts should make to develop “green” BCAs used dynamically and synthetically with other disease control approaches in an integrated disease management scheme, and evolutionary biologists should play an increasing role in formulating the strategies. Governments and the public should also play a role in the development and implementation of biological control strategies supporting positive externality.
Highlights
Plant diseases caused by infectious pathogens have seriously affected human society and nature through their damages to food production, economic development, ecological resilience, and natural landscapes over human history
As a promising approach to plant disease management, the concept of biological control is dated to 4000 years ago in Egypt [39]
Many biological control agents (BCAs) need time to establish on the host surface or root rhizosphere; disease forecast according to the conduciveness of local climate conditions and plant genetics can synchronize application time and frequency of BCAs with the developmental dynamics of plant diseases, which allows the former to colonize and take effects
Summary
Plant diseases caused by infectious pathogens have seriously affected human society and nature through their damages to food production, economic development, ecological resilience, and natural landscapes over human history. Annual yield loss, or billions of US dollar economic costs in staples of rice, wheat, maize, and potato along with additional costs spent on education and the development of management strategies [6,7]. These biological and economic losses at least partially account for the recent estimates of ~800 million people in the world experiencing starvation or undernourishment [7,8]
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