RESISTANCE IS INEVITABLE UNLESS.... WE MANAGE PESTICIDES MORE EFFECTIVELY!

摘要

Looking back at the history of crop protection has revealed that the insects, pathogens and weeds continue to become resistant to our efforts to select plants with greater tolerance to infestations or apply pesticides. In Victorian times in the UK, selection of the melanic form of the Peppered moth (Biston betularia) had already been noted as the result of the industrial revolution increasing the amount of soot in the atmosphere and deposited on trees, resulting in predators being able to spot the lighter form of the moth on blackened silver birch trees (Betula pendula). Thus confirming Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection, a process which underlies how the pests can survive and flourish during a period of continuous exposure to a pesticide, whether applied as a spray or incorporated as a resistant trait within a genetically adapted crop.