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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Parasitoids are one of the most important groups of natural enemies of insect pests, and have been widely used as biological control agents in the insect pest manegement. They inject some factors such as venom and polydnavirus into their hosts when they lay eggs into hosts to ensure their progeny develop inside or on the hosts by altering host immunity, development and metabolism. In the past thirty years, tremendous works have been done in the field of physiological regulation of host insects by parasitoids worldwide. In this review, we summarize the related progress in China based on published papers.

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.

Fungi, bacteria and actinomycetes have recognized as effective biocontrol agents to plant-parasitic nematodes. In this review, we have summarized the advances on screening, application and commercial formulations of biological agents during the past five years, and have proposed some suggestions for future researches.

Aleiodes esenbeckii (Hartig) is a dominant natural enemy parasiting on Dendrolimus spp. in forests. Scanning electron microscopy was used to observe the morphology and ultrastructure of sensilla on antenna, maxillary palpus, tibia of fore leg and ovipositor of A. esenbeckii. Gnerally, A. esenbeckii have 5 types of sensilla, namely, sensillum placodeum, sensillum trichoideum, sensillum chaeticum, sensillum campaniformium and sensillum basiconicum. The adaptive implications of the morphology and distribution of these sensillum of A. esenbeckii are discussed.

By comparison of sporulation and virulence, 29 strains of Beauveria bassiana isolated from Lepidopteran insects were screened for their pathogenicity to diamond moth, Plutella xylostella. Bb2390, a highly virulent strain was chosen, with LC₅₀ on the 2nd instar larvae at 1.56×10⁵ conidia×mL^-1, and LT₅₀ at 4.61 d under the concentration of 1.0×10⁷ conidia×mL^-1. The strain was pathogenic to all the stages of diamond moth, with mortality to eggs, 2nd instar larvae, pupae and adults were 37.2%, 90.3%, 58.8% and 24.5% respectively. The wettable powder of B. bassiana was used for field efficacy test against the larvae of P.xylostella, the control efficacy was 65.85%, significantly higher than aqueous conidial suspension with control efficacy 51.66%.

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.

Mass-rearing and bionomics of Campoletis chlorideae were studied under laboratory conditions at 26±1℃ and 65±5% RH. The results indicated that among the five tested heliopteran species, i.e., Helicoverpa armigera, H. assulta, Spodoptera litura, S. exigua and Mythimna separata, S. litura was the most feasible host for the rearing of C. chlorideae. When S. litura larvae at different developmental stages (2-6d old) were used as the host of C. chlorideae, the developmental period of the wasp did not differ significantly. With the increase of the host's age, the parasitizing ratio of the wasp decreased, the weight of the cocoon increased, whereas the emerging ratio of the adults did not differ (around 90%). Four-day-old host could produce the largest number of cocoon (55.3%). The longevity of the adult wasp developed from 3-5-day-old S. litura larvae was the longest among the treatments. Under 26℃, the averaged number of eggs per wasp was 92.7 and most wasps emerged in the daytime. Under temperature range of 4-26℃ and supplied with 10% honey solution, the average longevity of adult wasp increased with the decrease of temperature.

Herbivorous insect pests mainly feed on the leaves, stems, fruits, and nectar of host plants, and they usually show evident preference for specific host foods. The volatile from host foods is the key information for host-plant selection by herbivorous pests. The food-based attractants (i.e., botanical attractants), based on volatiles from the preferred plants, can function as an important technique for green pest control. During the early 20th century, the traditional food-based attractants, such as fermented sugar solution and sugar-acetic acid-ethanol, had been used to attract and kill pests. With further understanding of the volatile composition from host foods, the food-based attractants of fruit flies, noctuid moths, thrips, beetles and others have been developed by assembling synthetic volatile organic compounds. The food-based attractants mostly can effectively attract both sexes of herbivorous insect pests, and play an important role in the monitoring and controlling of some important agricultural and forest pests, such as Bactrocera dorsalis, Ceratitis capitata, Helicoverpa armigera, Cydia pomonella, Frankliniella occidentalis, Diabrotica virgifera virgifera, and Tomicus piniperda. This paper summarized the experience of development and application of food-based attractants, and suggested prospective for the future development of food-based attractants, which will promote the scientific research and technical development of food-based attractants for crop insect pests.