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 the viruses 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 the 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 in the formulated products. Spray the WDG product of 30-50g/ha is enough to control the damage of the pest, compared to the normal 750-1500g/ha. Presently, the capacity of the baculoviral insecticide production reaches to a very high level, at which the products could be applied in an 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 industrialization and commercialization. We developed an innovative approach that, in brief, is feeding the ladybird with the larvae of S. exigua that have been raised in industrializing 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 also can be bought on the network shopping platform Taobao.com (www.taobao.com).
3) Development of an automatic measure to release the egg parasitoid wasp trichogrammatid(s)
The egg parasitoid wasp trichogrammatid(s) is the largest scale and the most successfully used natural enemy to control lepidopterous insect pests. Traditionally, farmer has to hang the egg card of the wasp, a commercial product of the wasp, on crop in the field. The inefficient artificial distributing means leads to the capacity of the distribution only 4-5 ha/day being carried out by one person, very unsuitable for the mode of modern agriculture. We cooperate with Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics, CAS and invent a device adapted to a robot autogyro for the wasp distribution in the field. The high efficient and cost effective means could be reach coverage of 7-8 ha/sortie in 10-15 min fly. Now we are trying to improve its stability and heighten its efficient and make it easier to operate to meet commercialized application. We have test the instrument in the field of corn, oil core, sorghum and rice in the provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning, Inner Mongolia and Hebei for two years.
4) A pilot trial to produce high quality vegetables and fruits free from any chemical pesticide
To produce high quality farm products to meet the requirement of human health and environment protection, we attempt to integrate various green agricultural techniques, mainly based on biological control that include baculoviral insecticides spray, natural enemies release, insect pathogenic nematodes distribution, and other environmental friendly means, under the theory of integrated management in crop production. The aim of this work is to make up an extensible production paradigm that free from any chemical pesticide usage for each of crop on trial. From last year on, cooperating with HJBI we construct a demonstration center named Integrative Center of Green Agricultural Techniques of HJBI, in which tomato, leek, strawberry, water melon, muskmelon, grape, and green pepper et al. are planted mainly with biological control and agricultural control means to manage the crops pests without any chemical pesticides usage. Now the producing procedures for leek, tomato and green pepper are approaching maturation and waiting for further demonstrating in other areas. This work might be more significant in ameliorating the current severe status of chemical pesticides overuse in China.
