Talk:Biological insecticides

It has been suggested that this page or section be merged into Ecologic pesticides and herbicides

I disagree for the following reasons:

1. I do not like the term 'Ecologic' - not found in any dictionary around here - 'ecological' perhaps, but where is the evidence that this is true with plant extracts? Pesticides such as pyrethroids and neonicotinoids are modified plant extracts.

2. Pest management techniques should be evidence-based - with registrations, commercial products or peer-reviewed scientific papers - a useful reference is:
 * Copping L.G. (ed.) (2004). The Manual of Biocontrol Agents (formerly the Biopesticide Manual) 3rd Edition. British Crop Production Council (BCPC), Farnham, Surrey UK.

3. Microbial agents are substantially different from these chemicals - which can at best be descibed as 'plant extracts' - and such products are rarely accompanied with toxicological data.

comment added by Roy Bateman

(talk • contribs) 19:46, 30 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I think we really need to have a single article with all of these "nontoxic/organic/biological" substances -- whatever you want to call them. I think we should call it "Ecological pesticides" or "Organic pesticides" simply because not all of these substances are biological -- note copper. Organic is well-recognized as associated with organic farming and thus people know that these are considered to be safe and healthy. I know that the term pesticides is used broadly to include fungicides and herbicides. From there, maybe we can break it down, but we might not have to if there's not too many of these things. Ultimately, what we would be trying to list in this article is all of the "pest control" substances used in "sustainable agriculture". OptimistBen (talk) 01:08, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Many thanks for all your comments/edits Ben. I think that we can agree that these techniques should be cross-linked with over-arching pages such as "sustainable agriculture" (but how does this differ from say Good Agricultural Practice, for example?). However, I have a BIG problem with including plant extracts together with biological control - some of them really are very toxic and would never pass a modern Pesticide Safety Authority!! brgds Roy Bateman (talk) 15:53, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

What do you mean, how does this differ from Good Agricultural Practice? I really think we should have one page for ecological pesticides. If some of these are toxic, then that is the place we can point this out. They wouldn't be in the link to biological pest control necessarily, as that has more to do with predation. Rather, they'd be in their own separate article of ecological pesticides. ImpIn | {talk - contribs} 17:26, 23 May 2008 (UTC)