Abstract
Growing pressure to reduce the environmental pesticide burden has the greatest impact on agriculture and crop protection. There is an enormous increase in the demand for research on new, effective, naturally based agents that do not pose an environmental risk. Phytophthora infestans is one of the most destructive phytopathogens, especially in cases where synthetic fungicides are not allowed. This paper describes the high efficacy and safety of the natural polymer chitosan under in vitro and in vivo conditions and its dominance over other natural agents or products. Chitosan demonstrated the highest efficacy against P. infestans. A concentration of 0.2–0.4% was highly effective. The protective effect of chitosan was 99.3% in natural conditions. Direct activity, equivalent to synthetic fungicides (MIC50 0.293 mg/mL), was confirmed. Chitosan was rated non-toxic to useful non-target species. We promote further chitosan expansion within legislation and implementation of chitosan as a safe substance that could reduce the pesticide burden, particularly in eco-friendly plant protection and production of non-harmful foods.
Highlights
The use of chemical synthetic fungicides in medicine, cosmetics, and other areas has been an integral part of the modern advanced world for many years
Our experiments prove the ecological safety and non-harmfulness of chitosan, even in extreme doses on model useful non-target organisms that could be at risk during treatment using synthetic pesticides against P. infestans
The inhibitory effect of chitosan was 57.8–86.8% depending on the concentration compared to the infected control (Table 1)
Summary
The use of chemical synthetic fungicides in medicine, cosmetics, and other areas has been an integral part of the modern advanced world for many years now. The problem of using fungicides does not resonate in any of the aforementioned areas as significantly as in the sphere of agriculture, which increasingly encounters justified or exaggerated environmental obstacles. The use of pesticides is currently subject to an increasing number of restrictions due to the rising tendency of environmental protection [1]. The registration process and implementation into the practice of new, less environmentally harmful products are complicated and extremely expensive. One of the ways of ensuring better and faster access to environmentally friendly options of protection was the status of so-called basic substances (BSs) or low-risk active substances (LRASs) implemented in the European
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