Chiral Pesticides

Abstract

Chiral pesticides can be synthesized using various methods that include catalytic asymmetric synthesis, enzymatic transformation, and the chiron technique. These synthetic methods for chiral pesticides are discussed in detail in this chapter. After synthesis of chiral pesticides, their absolute configurations should be determined. The common techniques for the determination of the absolute configuration of chiral pesticides, discussed in this chapter, include X-ray crystallography and circular dichroism spectroscopy. The synthetic processes can produce either racemates or enantiopure forms of the chiral pesticides. Currently, most of the chiral pesticides on the market are racemic mixtures. Enantiomers of the racemic mixtures usually have different bioactivity and toxicity on target and non-target organisms, respectively. One enantiomer usually is more active than the other enantiomers. Thus, there is a current general drive to replace the racemates on the market with enantiopure formulations of chiral pesticides. This phenomenon is called chiral switching, and its detailed discussion is given in this chapter.