Pesticides: Chemical and Biological.

There is a requirement by World Health Organization (WHO), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and other International Organizations to develop environmentally sustainable systems for controlling pests that are less reliant on chemical pesticides as the primary management tool. However biological control alone cannot at the moment solve all pest problems and must be considered instrument to be used in combination with other methods. Compatibility of chemical pesticides (CP) and biological pesticides (BP) is one of the key for the implementation of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) programs. Testing the compatibility of CP and BP is necessary if these two agents are to be applied together in the integrated management. Synergistic, neutral or antagonistic responses are reported of some commercial BP with CP. Although the compatibility of these pest control methods has been framed as a contentious and complicated issue, they are being increasingly used in combination or even in tandem to control pests, in agricultural and urban settings, as well as for control of invasive species and insect vector of human and animal diseases. The compatibility is not always achieved, but in several case combinations can result in an additive or even synergistic effect improving pest control and reducing the use of CP. Discussion on the necessity of a wider international standard to achieve a necessary formal compatibility with respect to environmental and human health are done. Although approach combining CP with BP can provide a safer more comprehensive management program, with the results of reducing CP, exhaustive and standardized method to evaluate Environmental Risk Assessment (ERA) of this combination is still need. ERA is important as synergism on the target pest could also result in a toxicological synergism for some non target organisms. However, most of the information documenting adverse environmental effects has come from studies focused on exposure to single pesticides, but in normal agricultural practice it is rare to use only a single pesticide and combing BP with CP could be an example. ERA of combination of CP and BP could be useful to predict effect also in the case where combination was not fully intended. Thus the directions for the future are to evaluate and standardize environmental risk assess and cost analysis of CP and BP compatibility.