The importance of biodefensive products for integrated management

For a long time, we have heard about the importance of integrating different forms of management for pest control. MIP, an acronym usually used to designate integrated pest management, aims to achieve high control efficiency by reducing problems related to the resistance of these organisms.

However, one of the challenges for its real applicability in Brazilian crops is the awareness of rural producers that this type of technique has good results in both the short, medium and long term. The pest survey and the technologies that emerge to help monitor and predict the occurrence of pests are tools that boost IPM and ensure greater effectiveness.

In this context, biodefensive products are powerful weapons, contributing positively to increasingly healthier and more profitable crops, including from a financial point of view. Biological pesticides, in general, guarantee a greater residual effect than many of the alternatives on the market. In other words, they guarantee a longer period of control, at levels of low economic impact, of pests, diseases and nematodes. Furthermore, it is an important tool to reduce crop resistance problems due to the irrational use of chemical pesticides.

The evolution of this market is something that has been happening over the years and is here to stay. Always attentive to the evolution of formulations, application processes and use of new organisms, the industries producing this type of input for the field are modernizing day after day, which only brings gains to the agricultural segment in general.

According to data from Embrapa Informática Agropecuária, 95% of the increase in global food production will have to come from productivity gains and technologies that help farmers, who will need to do more with less, more efficiently, quickly and at less cost. This will include the use of new solutions, including biodefenses.

Biological control, without a doubt, deserves a special highlight among IPM solutions, as in Brazil we have effective examples of its effectiveness, such as the containment of leafhoppers from roots in sugar cane made with the fungus Metarhikum anisopliae, from caterpillars with the bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis, which show us how it is possible to use these methods on large scales and with high levels of efficiency, among others.

We know that in a tropical country like ours, for example, the incidence of pests becomes an even greater challenge, but, without a doubt, and in this context, biological pesticides came to make IPM even more effective.