Building bridges between disciplines for sustainable crop protection

Abstract EN

Plant protection is an interdisciplinary area that historically involved agronomy, plant breeding, entomology, plant pathology, statistics, and weed science.

After World War II, pesticide development took precedence and chemistry, physics, and engineering were favored.

This led to excessive use of synthetic pesticides, causing pest resistance to insecticides, contamination of ecosystems and undesirable health effects.

As a result, the integrated pest management concept was developed in the 1960s.

This expanded into new disciplines, such as mathematics, computer science, meteorology, and aeronautics to forecast pest occurrence and dispersal.

It also included molecular biology and microbiology to produce biological control agents and GMOs and to manage pest resistance in them.

IPM can contribute to sustainable agriculture both philosophically and functionally.

IPM and sustainable development evolved during the last three decades of the 20th century.

This process was supported by the integration of several basic and applied sciences in the development of plant protection components and dissemination of information.

These include the social sciences such as economics, sociology, and gender studies.

Also, public and private institutions are involved in the research and development of plant protection technologies, production and distribution, implementation, adoption, and evaluation in the field.