Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from New Approaches to Pest Control and Eradication: A Symposium Sponsored by the Pesticides Subdivision of the Division of Agricultural and Food Chemistry at the 142nd Meeting of the American Chemical Society, Atlantic City, N. J., September 11, 1962
While there are some real problems to be solved which involve residues, insect resistance to insecticides is the really big problem. Curiously, the opponents of pesticides fail to measure it in its full dimensions. Resistance of insects to insecticides is a truly growing problem. As long ago as 1908 the repeated use of lime-sulfur sprays in orchards in Clarkson Valley, Washington, selected out a resistant strain of the San Jose scale, which spread and reached southern Illinois orchards in 1920. Then there followed three species of scale insectsin California which. Were very resistant to hydrogen cyanide. The codling moth, peach twig borer, and two species of cattle ticks developed resistance to arsenicals. Other species were selected out that resisted the killing action of tartar emetic, cryolite, selenium, and rotenone. But during the period 1908 to 1945 only 13 species of insects or ticks had developed recognizable resistance. Now the picture is different. The total number of resistant strains has risen to. What A. W. A. Brown, a noted authority on resistance, calls the appalling figure of 137 species. This period commenced with development of resistance to ddt in the house?y and was quickly followed by resistance to bhc, chlordan, and dieldrin. Seventy-two species of insects of public health importance are involved, 58 showing resistance to dieldrin, 36 to ddt, and 9 to organophosphorus insecticides. Among agricultural insects, 65 species of plant-feeding arthropods have developed resistant strains, 19 to ddt, 16 to dieldrin, and 20 to organophosphorus insecticides.
This whole problem calls for the utmost resourcefulness and good research planning, if we are to keep ahead of it. There is no single answer to the resistance problem. We can meet some parts of this problem by shifting to other types of insecticides; this is being done where feasible. Where the shift is from a chlorinated hydrocarbon to an organophosphorus insecticide, some residue problems may inci dentally be solved. In some sectors there is a shift over to carbamate type insecticides. But this is not enough, nor does it, by any stretch of the imagination, answer the resistance problem. Cross resistance between insecticides is more the rule than the exception.
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