Disadvantages of Biological Control Biological control agents are expensive to find. The greatest expenditure occurs during the field survey and the early testing stage, which must be carried out abroad. There may not even be suitable agents. Potential agents are also expensive to test for specificity.
Biological control can be less or more expensive than pesticides. You may incur significant expenses studying, choosing, testing and breeding a bioagent. However, where bioagents are applied to low-level pest populations, pest control can be long-term and economical. Some fungi attack insects and kill them.
A fungal spore penetrates the insect and grows along it. It takes about a week for the insect to die. Fungi are cost-effective unless a high application rate is needed for severe insect infestations. A major disadvantage of biological pest control may be that it takes a long time to actually control the pest population.
The biggest advantage of pesticides is that they are readily available and very easy to use, unlike alternative methods such as biological control and other similar methods, which can take a long time to plan and often do not have an immediate effect on pests. Chemical pesticides are highly effective against pests that feed directly on crops over a very large area, but they must be used safely, and the economic problems of modern pesticide use must be largely taken into account. Unlike some cases of chemical pesticide programs, biocontrol reduces, but does not eradicate, pest populations. Unlike the chemical process, biological pest control does not leave any type of residue such as its sequelae.
It is difficult to develop biological control in the field because it requires highly qualified scientific personnel. There is relatively less investment in biological control research compared to chemical pesticides, 26% variation changes in the behavior of natural enemies that can be caused by breeding conditions are multiple, This variation leads to inconsistent results in biological control. Potential agents are expensive to test for specificity. Host specificity testing can take many years to complete due to the need for thoroughness.
Biological control operates over large areas, so it can not be limited to individual properties or the meadow, It does not eradicate the organism pest completely, because if the control agent reduces the pest population too much, destroys its own food source. In order to choose a successful biological control program, it is crucial to identify the pest along with its population levels and the circumstances of the infestation. It is highly specific to a pest, can be less or more expensive than pesticides, can incur significant expenses studying, choosing, testing% 26 reproduction of the bioagent, a long-term solution if the balance is established, biological pest control is economical in the long term% 26 can be used in a greenhouse. Each successive generation of surviving pests will have the same genetics resistant to pesticides, and eventually the pests will become completely resistant to the pesticide.
The overall effectiveness of the program and its economic benefits are greatly enhanced even when pesticides are used in a way that reduces the likelihood that pests will become resistant to the chemicals used to combat them. Biological pest control is a very specific strategy, whatever predator is introduced, it will only control the population of the pest they are destined to attack, making it a green alternative to chemical or mechanical control methods, while chemicals that kill weeds can destroy fruit plants, Biological control allows fruit to be left uninterrupted while weeds are destroyed. Biological control is unpredictable, Its unpredictability lies primarily in the fact that natural enemies depend on environmental conditions. Deploying BCA in a new environment requires a lot of research to achieve desirable results due to climate constraints.
It is an alternative to pesticides% 26 poisons, when the organism is removed from the food web, can disturb everyone else around it, so, we must be very careful, biological control is a better and safer method of control than the use of pesticides. . .
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