Specialty Crops and Beyond: Scaling Semiochemical Solutions for Global Agriculture

Insect control using semiochemicals (chemicals that influence an organism’s behavior, such as pheromones) has been shown to be an environmentally sustainable, ecologically sound alternative to traditional pesticide applications for management of crop pests. Semiochemicals tend to be more selective in their activity than broad-spectrum pesticides, affecting the behavior of only certain classes of insects; dissipate relatively quickly after being released into the environment; and are generally less prone to the evolution of resistance. Despite these advantages, semiochemical-based technologies have gained adoption only in a narrow range of crop protection scenarios, often characterized by higher-value, smaller-scale crops (e.g., orchard fruits) and/or inaccessibility of more traditional, chemical-based insect control tactics, sometimes due to deregistration or resistance. The purpose of this chapter is to present several instances demonstrating the potential of semiochemical tools to support crop productivity within such scenarios and extending beyond these limited use cases into the management of multiple insect pests of row crops (including food staples like maize, wheat, and rice) and even beyond the suppression of pest impacts to the improvement of crop productivity by enhancing the performance of the world’s most important pollinator species, Apis mellifera.