Abstract

Synthetic pesticides are an invaluable component of agriculture, which enhance agricultural productivity because in their absence, heavy losses caused by pests would be incurred. For instance, in the United Kingdom wheat yields rose from 2.5 t/ha in 1948 to 7.5 t/ha in 1997 (Cooper and Dobson 2007). As a result, an astronomic increase has been recorded in their use, and to date, more than 1000 substances have been registered as pesticides (Tomlin 2003). However, not all the pesticide reach the target (Pimentel 1992), because they find their way into environmental compartments where their residues can be detected at parts per million, parts per billion, or parts per trillion levels, depending on the persistence of the pesticides (Ccanccapa et al. 2016). Because of that, many regulations, such as the Food Quality Protection Act, have been put in place to control their registration (Dayan et al. 2009). In addition, there has been a paradigm shift toward exploring the use of biopesticides as a viable option to alleviating pesticide pollution. Biopesticides are mainly classified as plant extracts, microorganisms, pheromones, and genes.