Insects have a well-developed and sensitive visual system, and opsin is a basic component of animal vision, and its structure largely determines the sensitivity of visual pigments to light of different wavelengths. The duplication and differentiation of opsin genes are the main mechanisms for the production of new light pigment sensitivity. Throughout the evolution of animals, many instances of opsin gene duplication and loss have occurred, forming the sensitivity of the various animal visual systems we observe today. In recent years, extensive and in-depth research has been carried out on visual proteins. This article describes the types of photoreceptors, the color vision system of insects, the classification of visual proteins, the phenomenon of co-expression of visual proteins, the duplication and deletion of visual protein genes, and the mechanism and research status of the physiological functions of visual proteins.

Chaetomium globosum, one of common plant endophytic fungi, possesses potential biocontrol function against many plant diseases. This paper summarized the research advances of Chaetomium globosum on biocontrol effect, and its biocontrol mechanisms, which include antibiosis, growth-promoting effect, induction of plant resistance, niche and nutrient competition, and hyperparasitism. Chaetomium globosum exhibits great application potential on plant disease control and growth promotion, soil improvement, and straw degradation. Advances on the fermentation technology and genetic engineering were also illuminated. This study will provide theoretical references for the application research of Chaetomium globosum as biocontrol agent.

At present, in the context of protecting biodiversity, maintaining the sustainable and healthy development of ecosystems and reducing the use of fertilizers and pesticides, using agricultural biodiversity to control pests has become one of the hotspots in domestic and foreign research. Agricultural biodiversity is important for maintaining the function of agricultural ecosystem and the control of crop pests are of great significance. This paper briefly describes the concept and current situation of agricultural biodiversity, and summarizes the scientific principles or theories of pest ecological regulation of biodiversity, starting from the protection of agricultural biodiversity by non-agricultural habitats and its influencing factors on agricultural biodiversity. The methods and specific applications of ecological regulation to crop pests using agricultural biodiversity are analyzed at the three levels of farmland, farmland boundary and farmland landscape pattern, and finally put forward the development direction of ecological regulation to crop pests using agricultural biodiversity, which provides knowledge, principles, methods and technical support for effective pest ecological regulation.

Botanical pesticides have aroused the researchers' great interest all over the world. The article will give a concise elucidation to botanical pesticides from several aspects including the research history, current situation, industrialization efforts, application technique emphasis, special activities, biosynthesis technique, environment pattern and its mechanism, the effects of comprehensive use the residues from botanical pesticides and “pesticides-fertilizer unification” to novel plant protection theory and practice. The article present the problems appeared in fields of R & D, application, marketing promotion and management concerning botanical pesticides, and give the relevant countermeasures. And also, the article discussed the development trend and emphasis of botanical pesticides.

Each year, the epidemic and outbreak of major diseases and pests will have a major impact on agriculture, resulting in serious economic losses, with the application of chemical reagents its resistance has gradually increased, therefore, it is of great significance to explore new green, safe and efficient pest control technology. RNAi, as a tool to study gene function, has shown great potential in developing new pest control strategies. However, the efficiency of RNAi is limited by the degradation effect of nuclease. In order to improve the effective delivery of dsRNA, nanoparticle-mediated technology was developed and widely used in pest control. At the same time, the efficient synthesis of targeted insect dsRNA based on engineered bacteria provides feasibility and technical support for field promotion. This paper mainly summarized the research and application of RNAi technology and nanoparticle-mediated technology in pest control.

Streptomyces pratensis S10 was isolated from tomato leaf mould, exhibiting a potential application in biological control. It is of great significance to establish an efficient and stable genetic manipulation system to carry out gene-directed modification, improve the level of gene expression, and further explore the biocontrol molecular mechanism of S. pratensis S10. In this study, a genetic transformation system based on intergeneric conjugation was optimized in S. pratensis S10, the temperature sensitive vector pKC1139 was used as the plasmid, Escherichia coli ET12567 (pUZ8002) used as the donor strain, and S. pratensis S10 was the recipient. The results show that the optimum conjugation transformation with a conjugation efficiency of 8.3×10^-7was developed under following conditions: Gauze’s medium No.1 as S. pratensis S10 and E. coli junction transfer medium, spores were heat shocked at 50 ℃ for 10 min, 1:100 for donor-recipient ratio, 25 μg/mL apramycin coverage 16 h post transconjugation, and adding MgCl₂ till final concentration of 15 mmol/L. Subsequently, based on the above optimized genetic manipulation system, a double-crossover mutant of a regulating gene was successfully obtained. A stable and efficient genetic manipulation system for S. pratensis S10 was developed, which lays a solid foundation for the further constructing high-yield strain and studying the active substance biosynthesis mechanism.

Strain 47M-1 of Penicillium bilaiae showed significant inhibitory effect on a variety of sesame pathogenic fungi. In order to analyze the inhibitiory active substances produced by this strain, liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry was used to detect the metabolites of strain cultured for 48 h, 96 h and 144 h. Then, classification of up-regulated differential metabolites in the HMDB database and enrichment of KEGG metabolic pathways were analyzed in order to identify the active metabolites. A total of 105 up-regulated differential metabolites were detected, which were mainly enriched in the superclasses of phenylpropanoids and polyketides. The enrichment analysis of the KEGG metabolic pathways showed that the up-regulated differential metabolites were mainly enriched in metabolic pathways, biosynthesis of cofactors, purine metabolism, biosynthesis of amino acids and ABC transporters. The inhibitiory activities of some up-regulated differential metabolites were verified using medicated plate method. These compounds naringenin, protocatechuic acid, D-(-)-quinic acid, hesperetin, 3-(3-Hydroxyphenyl) propanoic acid, 3, 4-dihydroxyhydrocinnamic acid, 5, 7-dihydroxy-2-(4-hydroxyphenyl)-3, 4-dihydro-2H-1-benzopyran-4-one, rosmarinic acid, bergapten and eriodictyol all showed excellent inhibition activities against sesame pathogenic fungi. In this study, the major groups and key metabolic pathways of potential inhibition metabolites produced by strain 47M-1 were identified, and the inhibitiory activity of some up-regulated differential metabolites was verified. This study will provide data support for the further development and utilization of strain 47M-1 and the research and development of microbial pesticide.

The plant biostimulants are diverse substances or microorganisms which include humic acid, chitin and its derivatives, seaweed extracts, etc. applied to enhance plant growth, development, tolerance to abiotic stresses and crop quality traits regardless of its nutrient content. The emergence of biostimulants has provided new ideas and solutions for the safety of agricultural products, and they have been widely used in agricultural production. They also have become a powerful tool for improving the efficiency of fertilizers and pesticides. The purpose of this review is to better under-standing of the concept of plant biostimulants including main categories and regulatory mechanisms in plants. Moreover, the characteristics of these biostimulants and its effects on plant growth, development, tolerance to abiotic stress, plant nutrition and crop quality traits are thoroughly described. In addition, this paper also briefly described the application prospects of plant biostimulants in agricultural production, opportunities and future challenges.

With enhancing of people's consciousness on health and environment as well as organic agriculture development, the “green” bioherbicide has being given more and more attention. Over twenty bioherbicide products have be registered or commercialized in worldwide, even some of them became successfully the international productions. However, the consumer market of these bioherbicides is still small due to the product self weakness. Here, this review covers the development necessity and urgency, classification, the global current status and future directions of bioherbicide. In addition, we mainly focus on that the practicability, achievements and the future prospects of the natural products-based bioherbicides. It is proposed that the structural diversity and different action target of natural products offer great opportunities for the exploiture of both directly used natural compounds as bioherbicide and synthetic herbicides with new target sites based on the structures of natural products.

This paper summarized the status and characteristics of biological pesticide industry, and analyzed the basis of biological pesticide industry development and industrial development situation; summarized the current situation of biological pesticides and related policies to guide the development of China; analyzed the competitiveness of China's bio-pesticide industry structural features and the evolution of industry trends, explored the bottleneck problem of bio-pesticide industry and the corresponding solutions; for the current development trends of biological pesticide industry, analyzed the domestic bio-pesticides, bio-pesticides market prospects and biological pesticide industry would become the rapid development of new sources of growth.

The brown marmorated stink bug, Halyomorpha halys (Stål) (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae) has a very broad host range and is a key pest in vegetable and fruit production. Native to China, Republic of Korea, DPR Korea and Japan, it has been accidentally introduced into the United States, Canada, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Germany, France, Italy, Hungary and Greece since the mid-1990s. With its rapid expansion, this insect is possibly becoming a serious agricultural pest worldwide. In the newly invaded areas, little nature enemy is found to control this pest efficiently. For example, indigenous parasites Telenomus podisi and Trissolcus flavipes in Canada and Switzerland respectively can attack H. halys eggs, but neither wasp can complete development successfully. As chemical pesticides would cause social and ecological side effects, classical biological control is consider a promising management approach, which leading to permanent establishment and long-term control H. halys in invaded areas by introducing a co-evolved host specific biological control agent. In this paper, we reviewed taxonomy, distribution, damage, biology, ecology and biological control of H. halys, with particular focus on nature enemies in the area of origin.

Biological control has been principal choice in integrated pest management since 1960s. Lots of achievements on biological control technologies were developed and applied. The proportion of biocontrol in IPM increased each year and started to dominate. Grasshoppers and locusts are important pests in the world, they caused lots of losses and are a threat for agricultural and husbandry area. In the study and application on biological control of grasshoppers and locusts, the parasites of grasshoppers and plant pesticides were applied more at early period as agents controlling grasshoppers and locusts, but at present, the entomopathogenies, such as fungus, microsporidia, nematodes, virus and bacteria and so on, these biological agents played more important role in the practices. These problems such as less variety and formulation, high cost and unstable effects partly restricted the development and application of grasshopper biocontrol, but the advantage of bio-agents including environmental friendliness, ecological safety and unease to form resistance for pest have made the industry become a necessary trend in global pesticide industry, which have promoted the development of grasshopper biocontrol to low cost, diversified variety and formulation for the future, for example Paranosema that could transmitted vertically, semiochemicals of locusts, fungi agents, natural enemies of grasshoppers and locusts and ecological managements, they are applied coordinately, and then keep complimentary effects and sustainable control for grasshoppers and locusts.

Bacillus velezensis Ba-0321, isolated from the rhizosphere soil of healthy tobacco plants, is a plant growth promoting rhizobacteria with strong antifungal activity. It has a good potential in biocontrol application. In the study, the inhibitory effects of strain Ba-0321 sterile filtrate on Fusarium oxysporum and Phytophthora nicotianae were determined by methods of co-culture. The whole genome of strain Ba-0321 was sequenced using the second-generation Illumina and the third-generation Nanopore platform, then analyzed for genome assembly, gene functional annotation, prediction of secondary metabolite synthetic gene clusters. The results showed that the sterile filtrate of strain Ba-0321 has inhibitory effects on both F. oxysporum and P. nicotianae. The culture medium containing 10% sterile filtrate has a higher inhibitory rate on the mycelial growth of the two pathogens, reaching 57.38% and 34.30%, respectively. The results of whole genome sequencing showed that the genome size of strain Ba-0321 was 4099109 bp, including 3897 coding genes, and the sequencing data are available in the GenBank database (accession No. CP101904). There were a large number of genes encoding enzymes, terpene, polyketone metabolic pathways, and genes involved in defense mechanisms have been annotated in the GO, COG and KEGG databases. Using anti-SMASH software, 13 secondary metabolite synthesis gene clusters were predicted encoding antibacterial substances such as Surfactin、Fengycin、difficidin、Bacillaene、Bacillibactin、Macrolactin H、Bacilysin. The existence of biosynthetic gene cluster for antibacterial substances and defence machainsm related genes in Ba-0321 strain genome were verified by PCR amplification and sequencing. The enzyme activity test results showed that the strain has resistant enzyme activities such as protease, chitinase, and cellulase.. This study provides a basis for analyzing the antimicrobial mechanism of strain Ba-0321 and mining antifungal related gene resources at the genomic level, which is of a great significance for research and application of the Ba-0321 strain in future.

Trichoderma is widely used as a biocontrol microbe against plant diseases in the world, which is mainly applied for controlling a variety of soil borne plant diseases and some plant aboveground diseases. With the advent of MAMPs (microbe-associated molecular patterns) theory,the study on mechanism of plant disease control and improved plant resistance to stress factors with Trichoderma as a biocontrol agent has come into a new stage, especially as the development of technologies based on systems biology, it has become possible to understand the nature of interaction of plant-Trichoderma-pathogen from point of "omics" view, which therefore would intensively enrich the theory basis of Trichoderma as biocontrol agent. Meanwhile, a diversified technical system for applying Trichoderma products developed in national agricultural industry would provide great promotion to sustainable development of agriculture in the future. This review will focus on new research progress on biocontrol mechanism with Trichoderma against plant diseases at molecular level.

Since the 1950s, artificial reproduction of Trichogramma and their application technologies have been systemically studied in China, and a great success in selection and application of intermediate hosts suitable for mass production has been achieved. In recent years, we have made some progresses in mass production of Trichogramma with the large eggs of Chinese oak silkworm, Antheraea pernyi Guerand small eggs of rice moth, Corcyra cephalonica (Stainton). In this paper, we summarized the new progresses in mass production with large eggs from the matched production facilities and processes, and with small eggs from the artificial diet composition and breeding device for larvae and collection methods for adult moth. In addition, we introduced the technologies with releasing Trichogramma for one time to long-term control corn borers and mixed-releasing two Trichogramma species produced using large eggs and small eggs to control rice striped stem borers. Ever since 2004, the total release area was approximately 13 million hectares. Overall, the great success has been achieved in the biological control of agricultural pests with Trichogramma in China. Finally, the problems and development trends in mass production of Trichogramma in future were discussed.

The ladybeetle Cheilomenes sexmaculata (Fabricius) (Coleoptea: Coccinellidae) is one of the dominant natural enemies of various insect pests in agroforestry ecosystem due to wide distribution, common occurrence in field, high reproductive rate, wide feeding range, excellent predation ability and strong adaptability, thus there is a bright development prospect to develop this predator. In this article we reviewed the research progress on C. sexmaculata in recent 40 years, mainly focusing on the taxonomy, biological characteristics, biological control, artificial rearing, and insecticide impacts. In addition, the prospects for the future studies and application of C. sexmaculata were also discussed.

Photosynthetic bacteria (PSB) are summarized as the group of microbes capable of carrying out photosynthesis with the employment of Bacteriochlorophyll. Members of PSB are regarded as important components in microbiome from plant surface and soil. Attributed to their extraordinary metabolism versatility, photosynthetic bacteria often play significant roles in processes like plant nutrient uptake, growth and development, as well as stress resistance and establish close relationships with plants and other microorganisms in agroecosystem. This confers PSB a reputation as plant beneficial microorganism. In this article, we mainly focus on the PSB-produced effects on the plant nutrition, growth promotion, stress resistance and disease management. The biological activities carried out by PSB, e.g., nitrogen fixation, phosphate solubilization, heavy metal immobilization, phytohormone and plant growth regulator production, antimicrobial compound synthesis, plant systemic resistance induction, are illustrated. Those activities are recognized as the main resorts to maintain the plant and soil health. In conclusion, as a group of microbes with properties including metabolism versatility, wide distribution, flexibly adaptive to environment, and intimately interactive with plants, photosynthetic bacteria can be exploited as a valuable resource for development of novel multi-functional bio-fertilizer and bio-control agent.

Plant-parasitic nematodes, the second destructive pathogens in agriculture, could not only attack their host using various strategies and induce profound changes in plants, but also cause secondary diseases following tissue damage, which always heavily influence the growth and productivity of crops. So it is extremely urgent to find effective nematicides. There are four main methods for nematode control:agricultural control, physical control, chemical control and biological control. Among them, biological control is a new method for plant-parasitic nematode control using animals, plants, microorganisms and their secondary metabolites. As one kind of secondary metabolites, phytochemicals are the core of botanical pesticides. Comparing to synthetic nematicides, plant-derived nematicides are more kindly to environment, more toxic to target organisms, less toxic to nontarget organisms and unlikely to generate nematode resistance. Therefore it is significant to develop new green nematicides using nematicidal chemicals isolated from plants. Herein, nematicidal plants from Asteraceae, Leguminosae and Labiatae, nematicidal phytochemicals including alkaloids, terpenes, isothiocyanates, glucosinolates and phenolics, their action mechanisms against pests and the applications of plant-origin nematicides were reviewed. Plant-derived nematicides are not only helpful to the control of plant-parasitic nematodes, but are also friendly to the environment and human. We hope that more researchers could pay attention on the research of nematicidal plants, their secondary metabolites and their nematicidal mechanism which will contribute to the control of plant-parastic nematodes and the finding of more lead compounds for nematicides.