Tens of thousands of natural products have been identified from plants and hundreds of thousands are yet to be isolated and screened for their bioactivities. This large reservoir of organic chemicals is largely untapped or under-tapped for use as pesticides. In this chapter the traditional applications of native plants as pesticidal agents and the results of biological and chemical studies on these plants in the past few decades are examined with a view to assessing their potential use in agriculture and related fields. The factors influencing efficacy, the advantages of and problems...

Agricultural pests include plant pathogens (Entomopathogenic fungi). There are estimated to be about 67,000 different pest species. They are constraint on agricultural production, responsible for around 40% loss of potential global crop yields. These losses occur despite the considerable efforts made at pest control, and they suggest that control on pest management are the best way forward for improving yields and access to food. Pest problems are inevitable part of agriculture.They occur seriously because systems of agriculture are very simplified, not stable modifications of natural...