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Microbial biopesticides: Current status and advancement for sustainable

agriculture and environment

Chapter · May 2020

DOI: 10.1016/B978-0-12-820526-6.00016-6

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 Chapter 15

Microbial biopesticides: Current status and

advancement for sustainable agriculture
and environment
Neelam Thakura, Simranjeet Kaura, Preety Tomara, Seema Thakurb and Ajar Nath Yadavc
a
Department of Zoology and Entomology, Akal College of Basic Sciences, Eternal University, Sirmour, India, b Department of Biotechnology, Dr. KSG
Akal College of Agriculture, Eternal University, Baru Sahib, Himachal Pradesh, India, c Krishi Vigyan Kendra Kandaghat, Solan, India

15.1 Introduction
World population will reach 10.12 billion by 2100, and for such a high population food demand will also increase which
needs the advance and higher agricultural productive materials (Economic and Social Affairs, 2010). Increase in the crop
production is based on recommended fertilizers, improved crop variety, effective control of disease, and pest management.
Management of pest is the main aspect for healthy and high crop yield that is able to afford food to the ever-increasing
population (Birch et al., 2011). Food production increased impressively in different parts of the world during the last
40 years, mainly due to the use of chemical pesticides (Oerke, 2006), which is not sustainable. It is revealed from earlier
studies that approximately 50,000 fungi, 10,000 insects, 15,000 nematodes, and 1800 weeds species damage fiber and food
crops worldwide. Protection of the agricultural as well as horticultural crops mainly depends on chemical pesticides
managed by Agricultural Ministries and Food Agriculture Organization (FAO) with certain rules and regulations. Inappro-
priate and expanded uses of pesticide lead to the resistance among the organisms and the rejuvenation of the new pest
problems. It also results in the destruction and elimination of their natural enemies with negative impacts on human health
as well as on the environment (Pathak et al., 2017). The extensive use of chemical pesticides also deteriorates the soil
texture (Kumari et al., 2014). Due to the presence of regional variation in the clifigmatic conditions (abiotic factors),
increasing the crop production worldwide is a very difficult task. In sustainable agricultural production, it is necessary
to deal with the problems caused by various pests. These pests consist of insects, weeds, fungi, viruses, nematodes, birds,
and animals. The use of microbial pesticides is quite suitable and appropriate for the researchers and farmers, as it is an
eco-friendly method for the control of pest population in the agricultural industry (Kour et al., 2019c, 2019d).
The microbiome or microorganisms as a biological pesticide is another choice in place of chemical pesticides, known to
play a vital role against insects and pathogens. The beneficial microbiomes having the multifarious plant growth-promoting
attributes such as biological nitrogen fixation (Rana et al., 2019a, 2019b), phosphorus solubilization (Yadav et al., 2015,
2019), potassium solubilization (Verma et al., 2016, 2017a; Yadav et al., 2016), zinc solubilization, and hydrolytic enzymes
production (Kour et al., 2019a; Verma et al., 2019; Yadav et al., 2016) are suitable bioresources under the natural as well as
abiotic stress condition of dought (Kour et al., 2020a, 2020b), low temperature, saline and different multi-stressed condi-
tions (Kour et al., 2020c; Saxena et al., 2016; Yadav and Yadav, 2018) for sustainable agriculture and environment. These
organisms facilitate the crop quality and also enhance the yield per year in the agricultural industry (Gupta and Dikshit,
2010; Timmusk et al., 2017). Therefore it is very essential to replace these chemical insecticides with biopesticides.
Management of different groups of pests or insects is done by applying large varieties of microorganisms including
fungi, bacteria viruses, protozoans, and nematodes as microbial pesticides. These pesticides are species-specific and
are non-pathogenic to other useful microorganisms (Kumari et al., 2014). They may be present naturally in the environment
or may be modified genetically for the production of toxicant, viz., insecticides or pesticides and shows species-specific
responses. Regularly applied microbial pesticides now a day are those microorganisms, which show pathogenic effect on
the population of pest. These biopesticides are also effective in small quantity and have the tendency to degrade quickly that
result in poorer revelation and eco-friendly method.

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