Plant Essential Oils and Pest Management

Abstract

Insect pest management in agriculture is facing challenge in several problems of using synthetic pesticides and toxic fumigants including environmental contamination, pesticide resistance, and destruction of nontarget organisms. So, public and environmental pressure can support environmentally safe pesticide alternatives to the use of synthetic pesticides. In recent years, a new field is developing on the use of botanical pesticide origin in the pest management practices. Botanicals have been considered as potential pest management agents, because they demonstrate to have a wide range of bioactivity and possess contact and fumigant toxicity and repellent, oviposition, and feeding deterrence. In addition, the main advantages of many plant-based pesticides lie in their low mammalian toxicity and rapid degradation with broad-spectrum activity. Botanical insecticides composed of essential oils may prove to be a reasonable alternative to the more persistent synthetic pesticides. The essential oils obtained by the distillation of aromatic plants can be utilized to protect agricultural product pests. Recently, the essential oils and their constituents have received a great deal of attention as pest control agents.