One of the ultimate goals of our scientific researches is to make scientific achievements serving the society of human beings. The interests of our group are focused on developing technological systems to industrialize and commercialize products using related insects as resources under the principles of insect physiology, molecular biology, pathology, virology, and biological control. Currently we have fulfilled some R&D procedures of some products that have been sold in the market or applied in practice, and some work is ongoing and waiting for completeness.

1. Industrialization and commercialization of baculoviral insecticides: Baculoviral insecticides are safety and environmental friendly bio-insecticides produced by orally inoculating the insect hosts with their respective baculoviruses. By breakthrough a series of technical bottlenecks for mass rearing their respective host insects, the baculoviral insecticides of Helicoverpa armigera nucleopolyhedrovirus, Spodoptera exigua nucleopolyhedrovirus, S. litura nucleopolyhedrovirus and Plutella xylostella granulovirus were industrialized in the Pilot-Scale Base of Bio-Pesticides, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences at Henan Jiyuan Baiyun Industry Co., Ltd. (HJBI). Nowadays, total of 8 products including formulations of technical material (TC), water dispersible granule (WDG) and suspension concentrate (SC) have been approved to commercialize with authorized certificates by the nation and extended to more than 6 million hectares all over the world.

2. Industrialization and commercialization of the ladybird Harmonia axyridis, an important natural enemy of aphids and other tiny insect pests: Since the predacious natural enemy Harmonia axyridis must be fed with “meat” (usually its prey aphids), industrialization of the ladybird should be based on aphid mass rearing, which is a laborious and costly procedure leading it difficult to be commercialized. We developed a producing procedure mainly based on lepidopterous larvae as prey of the ladybird in lieu of aphids, which is manufactured in HJBI voluminously to feed the ladybird and makes commercialization of the ladybird into reality.

3. Development some important trichogrammatids: Trichogramma japonicun and T. chilonis are two important egg parasitoid wasps used in lepidopterous pests biocontrol in the field of rice and vegetables. However, limited by their production, the trichogrammatids are difficult to be bought in the market. We developed a series innovative producing procedures that might boost practical application of the trichogrammatids in biocontrol.

4. Research on artificial cultivation of Chinese caterpillar fungus indoors: Cultivation of Chinese caterpillar fungus (Ophiocordyceps sinensis) indoors is the conundrum in the industry of the precious fungus that has not been settled as yet. We have set up a large continuous population of the fungus’ host,ghost moth Thitarodes sp., in the laboratory for further researches, which might be the most important basis for artificial cultivation of the fungus. We have also resolved some other bottlenecks in the artificial cultivation, such as reproducible inoculation of the caterpillar fungus to its host larvae and obtained the mummy corpse, namely sclerotium, approaching to the success of artificial cultivation of the precious fungus at low latitude.