Pest Biological Control and Crop Loss

Dear Colleagues,

Pest biological control is a key ecological service in conservation agriculture, and it has always received special attention. Increasing biological control agents such as predators and parasitoids has been considered an important goal in integrated pest management.

Several tools have proven to be efficient in increasing the abundance and diversity of useful organisms. For example, at a plant scale, the use of elicitors seems to be particularly efficient in attracting predators and parasitoids. The same effect can be obtained by introducing cover crops or flowering plants. Recently, a great amount of attention has been focused on the importance of landscape complexity as a reservoir of beneficial organisms, favoring a spillover of these to agroecosystems.

Despite large evidence of the positive effect of these tools in increasing beneficial insects and/or reducing pests in crop, data about an increase of crop production are still controversial. The positive effect of these tools is in fact largely dependent on a high number of factors such as type of crop, pest, and geographical areas. For these reasons, there is a huge need for research that associates yield production with pest biological control.

This Special Issue therefore aims to publish high-quality articles which connect pest biological control with yield production in a large range of different crops. The purpose of the Special Issue is to obtain data about the positive effect of biological control agents (predators, parasitoids, competitors, pathogens) on reducing crop loss in order to propose practical tools with a clear advantage for farmers.

Dr. Daniele Sommaggio
Guest Editor

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