Feasibility of New Pesticide Development in Korea

우리나라에서의 신농약 개발전망

Under the limited arable land, the enhancement of agricultural productivity is indispensable to provide the food demand which is concomitant with the rapid increase in population. From this viewpoint, the upbringing and dissemination of high-yielding varieties has been promoted continuously and several modifications in cultural practices, including heavy fertilization, dense planting, and early transplanting, also have been gradually developed. However these changes in cultivation have led to the increased outbreak of insect pests and diseases. And this unexpected results have accelerated the number and complexity of pesticides employed as well as their consumption. Even though pesticides are essential materials contributing to the steady production of agricultural crops, large scale consumption of them has given rise to several adverse impacts, such as mammalian hazard and/or environmental contamination. In this respect, recent development of new pesticides has been concentrated on 'safe pesticide', as it were, that has the highly selective properties without unfavorable side influences on other ecosystem. According to literature cited up to now, feasibilities of safe pesticide development would be summarized as two categories. One of them is the development of chemical pesticides, which include the molecular structure modification of established pesticides for increased safety and synthesis of new safe chemicals which can attack the vulnerable point of physio-ecological characteristics in insect pests and diseases. The other is the biological pesticides which comprise natural enemies and microorganisms to act selectively on confined insect pests and diseases, In addition, improvement of physico-chemical properties of available pesticide formulations would be one of the desirable means for safe pesticide development in view of efficacy enhancement and minimization of hazardous properties or safe pesticide development, various approaches are feasible and needed to study, however, long period and much financial outlay are necessary to develop a new item. And under the present situation in Korea, there are many difficulties for performing research on all the possible routes. Therefore, combined pesticides by the reasonable combination of already registered resticides evaluated as the fairly safe pesticides and safe formulation based on their physico-chemical properties would be developed primarily. And many efforts would be given gradually for the development of new chemical and biological pesticides.