Our major research interests highlight applied researches around development of biological control agents and utilization of insect resources, and mainly focus on industrializing and commercializing related products to earn economic benefits that would be beneficial to the society and environment. The work includes industrialization and commercialization of baculoviral insecticides and natural enemies, development of culture system to breed Chinese caterpillar fungus artificially.
Baculoviral insecticides are safe and environmental friendly bio-insecticides. They should be produced by orally inoculating their insect hosts with the baculoviruses and let the viruses replicate in their host bodies. The bottlenecks of their industrialization are mass rearing their host insects in a very large scale, cost effectively purifying the viruses from the insect corpses, and processing the virus into high quality formulation exhibiting high efficient in the field. Fortunately, we have achieved success in the all respects and marketed the products successfully.
The ladybird Harmonia axyridis is an important natural enemy of aphids and other tiny insect pests that has substantial requirement in the market. Traditionally, the ladybird is produced by feeding it with aphids reared on the plant growing in greenhouse. This measure is costly, low efficient, which limits the scale of production and application of the ladybird. We have invented a novel technical system to produce the ladybird, mainly using lepidopterous insect larvae as the alternative prey of the ladybird, which makes the production easy, cost effective, and fit for large scale production. This realizes marketing the ladybird.
Trichogramma sp., one of the most important egg parasitoid wasps, is most widely applied natural enemy all over the world. Some important species applied in rice and vegetables field, such as T. japonicun and T. chilonis, are produced mainly based on egg of Corcyra cephalonica as host.However, generation period of C. cephalonica is more than 60 days and it multiplies only around 50 times for each generation. These biological traits lead producing the two trichogrammatids at very low efficiency. By screening more suitable host for the two trichogrammatids production, for the first time, we found a rapid growth (22 days for each generation) and high fecundity (average 400 eggs per female) noctuid insect Spodoptera exigua being apt to be the host of the trichogrammatids. This progress might pave the way for industrializing and commercializing of the two trichogrammatids for rice and vegetables biological control.
Chinese caterpillar fungus is a very expensive Chinese medicine that exclusively grows in pasture of Tibetan plateau between 2800 and 4500 meters altitude. It is a complex of larva of ghost moth Thitarodes sp. parasitized by the fungus Ophiocordyceps sinensis. Until now there is no successful report of its cultivation artificially. From 2010 on, we began to work with this fungus. Many progresses have been achieved that include a large population of ghost moth having been established in the laboratory and reproducibly obtaining the fungus infecting host, and the host mummy corpses (sclerotium) have been induced from the infected hosts, approaching to the ultimate goal of artificial cultivation of Chinese caterpillar fungus indoors.

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). Our unique technics or technology systems make the products have some hi-tech characters. For example, the technical material (TC) of virus product contains very high polyhedral inclusion bodies (PIBs) content that means a very high insecticidal activity. Around 3 g of HaNPV TC (500 billion PIBs/g) could be processed to formulation that could control the cotton bollworm in an area of 1 ha. An advanced ultra-low dosage formulation water disposable granule (WDG) was adopted, which is the first invented formulation in baculoviral insecticides. Spray 30-50g/ha of the WDG product is enough to control damage of the pest, compared to the normal 750-1500g/ha. Presently, the production capacity of baculoviral insecticide reaches to a very high level, at which the products could be applied in area covering more than 2 million hectares annually, which means over 3,000 ton chemical insecticides released to the environment could be avoided accordingly.
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. From 2009 to present, the baculoviral products have been sold to domestic market and exported to oversea markets including those of Switzerland, the United States, India, and Brazil, and totally extended to the area approximate over 6 million hectares to control the insect pests infesting in the field of cotton, tomato, soybean, vegetables and other crops, which would reduce the usage of chemical insecticides equivalent to more than 9,000 tons.

2. Industrialization and commercialization of the ladybird Harmonia axyridis, an important natural enemy of aphids and other tiny insect pests
The ladybird Harmonia axyridis is the predominant natural factor to suppress the population of aphids and other tiny insect pests by predation in the field in China. There is substantial requirement of the natural enemy used in agriculture, forestry, park and garden et al. However, routine protocol to mass rear it is mainly based on producing numerous aphids as its food on certain plants growing in greenhouse, a laborious and costly process, leading it difficult to be industrialized and commercialized. We developed an innovative approach that, in brief, is feeding the ladybird with the larvae of S. exigua that have been raised in industry scale in HJBI with artificial diet instead of the normal aphid diet. This approach solved the essential problem of the diet of the ladybird, which is the main bottleneck of its industrialization. Nowadays, the ladybird has been marketed to organic farms, public parks, family gardens and other places, et al. It can also be bought on the network shopping platform Taobao.com (www.taobao.com).

3. Development novel host for some important trichogrammatids manufacture
The egg parasitoid wasp Trichogramma is the largest scale and the most successfully used natural enemy to control lepidopterous insect pests. However, some important species, for example T. japonicun and T. chilonis, are produced utilizing the eggs of Corcyra cephalonica as host. Limited by their host’s long generation period (ca. 60 days for each generation) and low fecundity (ca. amplifying 50 times via each generation), the trichogrammatids are difficult to be commercialized though there are substantial demands on the market for control the pests of rice and vegetables. We exploit a novel host for production of the two trichogrammatids, that is egg of a noctuid insect Spodoptera exigua, a short generation period (ca. 22 days for each generation) and a high fecundity (ca. amplifying 200 times via each generation) noctuid insect. These biological properties greatly shortened producing period and improved productivity, and as a result greatly reduced production costs. Our work might make some more trichogrammatids go into practical application in biological control.

4. Research on artificial cultivation of Chinese caterpillar fungus
Chinese caterpillar fungus, also called winter-worm summer-herb, or dong chong xia cao, is a precious Chinese medicine yielded in the alpine of Tibetan plateau. It is a complex of ghost moth Thitarodes. sp. (Lepidoptera, Hepialidae) parasitized by an ascomycetous fungus Ophiocordyceps sinensis (Hypocreales, Ophiocordycipitaceae). All Chinese caterpillar fungus sold in the market are excavated from the alpine pasture. Expensive price and large-scale digging at the pasture from April to June every year makes resources of the fungus more and more scarce and ecological deterioration of Tibetan plateau pasture. Although researches on artificial cultivation have been carried out for more than 40 years in the country, there is no success in the area. The main difficulties include it is difficult to establish population of ghost moth indoors for further researches, a lot of deadly diseases other than O. sinensis kill the ghost moth reared indoors before it infected by O. sinensis, the way how the fungus invade into its host and accomplish the infection is not known, and what circumstances are critical for inducing the infected mummy corpse, the sclerotium, into fruiting body of Chinese caterpillar fungus. From 2010 on, we carry out researches on this area. Many important progresses have been achieved. We have established a large population of ghost moth that have replicated for many generations in our laboratory. Based on a lot of host to be studied, we find an easy and reproducible way to infect the host with the fungus and have obtained lots of sclerotia for further researches on fruiting body induction. These achievements lead us more and more approaching the ultimate goal of artificial cultivation of Chinese caterpillar fungus.