Pestuk

International Pest Control – September/October 2025 – Vol 67, Nr.5
2025-10-07 21:31 UTC

Cover image: Endura – 45 years of chemistry and innovation. Picture by Endura S.p.A

The Human Genome Project took 13 years from launch to completion and cost an estimated $2.7 billion. Now, using massively parallel sequencing, the task can be completed in just hours: my friendly AI says the record is 7.5 hours although more normally it takes weeks. Now gene sequencing is used in all parts of our industry from plants to pests. Temperature-sensitive lethality (tsl) mutation has been used since the 1980s to kill female fruit flies at the embryonic stage and produce sterile males at an industrial scale. But only now has the single point mutation responsible for tsl been identified. It occurs in a gene found in many other insect species which opens the door to its use in highly specific control strategies for other pest species.

Technology use in pest control is also a growing sector. CABI’s BioProtection Portal, the development of which we have reported on several times over the past few years, has won them a Gold Stevie Award. In the US, wheat disease has been shown to be responsible for the loss of 560 million bushels of wheat (about 15.24 million tonnes) costing $2.9 billion. Fusarium head blight, stripe rust, and leaf rust emerged as the top three yield-reducing pathogens.

In Europe new records are being set, but not good ones, with longer, more intense transmission seasons for mosquito-borne diseases, including West Nile virus infection and chikungunya virus disease. Longer summers, milder winters and changes in rainfall are all contributing to mosquitoes extending their range and increasing disease pressure on Europeans.

The news section concludes with the discovery that potatoes are just tomatoes with big roots. The potato is apparently a hybrid between the tomato and Etuberosum which shared a common ancestor with the tomato 14 million years ago and was able to interbreed nine million years ago.

Pest of the Issue is the common house mosquito Culex pipiens, a carrier of West Nile virus amongst other diseases.

In Association & Society News we report on the launch of the Pest Management Industry Sustainability Guidelines and the programme for the AAB’s International Advances in Pesticide Application (IAPA) 2026.

Company News follows its well-established pattern of new product launches, including new tomato varieties from Bayer and on-farm forage analysis, acquisitions (Biobest), investments (Koppert), developments in AI, expanding partnerships and the adoption of “sustainable” wood treatments. We also have two companies publishing their Sustainability Reports.

This issue carries a company profile: Endura, a manufacture of Piperonyl butoxide, with origins dating back to the 1950s, is celebrating 45 years in the business of manufacturing fine chemicals for the pest control industry.

Our Special Feature on Advances in Application Technology, has contributions from Dr Partho Dhang (one of our Technical Consultants) and John Clayton of Micron Sprayers plus articles about precision dispensing of biocontrol agents, electric weed control and drones.

Public Health features mossies (they have very variable feeding preferences) and viruses (a vaccine for Nipah virus, which affects both pigs and humans). We also have an in-depth article on Wolbachia-based dengue control.

Unravelling the mechanism by which the large and economically important group of core eudicots produces indole could lead to targeted breeding of plants more attractive to pollinators and less susceptible to pathogens and pests according to researchers at the Max Planck Institute. Regenerative agriculture – something we haven’t paid much attention to previously – is the subject of an article looking at the use of biostimulants from Pedro Cabanita of Certis Belchim.

The timber industry is struggling to find a safe fumigant that isn’t a potent greenhouse gas, but which can be used to control the spread of invasive pests which have led to tree mortality worldwide costing an estimated $669 billion in losses. Dr Matt Hall considers the options. Our own Dr Terry Mabbett continues his three-part series on Oak Processionary Moth (OPM) with a look at pesticide spraying and the failure to control the spread of the pest in the UK.

Finally, we look at the impact of climate change on arsenic levels in rice and global crop yields – neither are positive for farmers and consumers. So that’s cheered everyone up!

Our next special feature is on Biocontrol and IPM so if you can contribute let us know! Articles come in multiples of about 600 words up to a maximum of 2,400, supported by high quality images (needed for print) and/or tables and charts.

Chris Endacott, Editor International Pest Control magazine
editor@international-pest-control.com