Although chemical pesticides have often attracted controversy, viable biological alternatives have been slow to come onto the market. Is this because the regulatory system makes it too difficult? Explore the data on the environmental sustainability of insect pathogenic fungi and how the regulatory system could better enable the development and marketing of this and other types of bio pesticide.UK farmers and growers are challenged with adopting environmentally acceptable methods of pest control while maintaining quality, productivity and profitability. This project provides new understanding of the environmental and regulatory sustainability of deploying inundatively applied biological control agents (aka biopesticides) as alternatives to chemical pesticides. This was addressed using entomopathogenic fungi to control aphids in leafy salad crops, a system of which the consortium has considerable expertise. The project comprises four linked objectives: (1) to assess the obstacles to regulatory innovation for environmentally-friendly pest control within a model of the regulatory state; (2) to improve understanding of the environmental behaviour of biopesticides in relation to entomopathogen local adaptation; (3) to assess the benefit / cost contributions of biopesticides to sustainability, given constraints imposed by existing decision-making networks; (4) to compare the private governance model of pesticide reduction in the UK with its legislatively driven counterpart in Denmark. By improving understanding of key natural and social science factors affecting the deployment of alternatives to chemical pesticides, and by entering into dialogue with principal actors in the pesticide regulation system, this project will progress sustainability goals for the UK rural economy across the whole of the food chain.

Research consisted of stakeholder interviews on (bio)pesticides with staff of the Pesticide Safety Directorate (PSD), large retailers (supermarkets), farmers and environmentalists; as well as observations of meetings between PSD and (bio)pesticide companies. Notes were taken during interviews and meetings and typed out afterwards. In addition, two biogeographical experiments were carried out resulting in two datasets: Nucleotide sequence data for fungal isolates extracted from soil samples (entomopathogenic fungal species), resulting from laboratory based DNA sequence analysis; and frequency of occurrence of entomopathogenic fungal species in different habitats (fungal species diversity and sequences).