Brazil ANDEF launches consultation website for agencies involved in biological control of plagues

The DefesaVegetal.net project in November received a new and important update: the inclusion of information on the agencies used for the biological control of plagues. The public can now view on the website information on the biology of parasitoids, predators, pathogens, and antagonists used in biological control programs in Brazil. Taxonomic information, biology and biological targets, and images are available for 27 species.

DefesaVegetal.net is a project by ANDEF – Brazil’s National Association of Vegetable Defense – and the content on natural enemies was provided through a partnership with the National Association of Biological Control Companies (ABCBio). According to Amália Piazentim Borsari of ABCBio, the main purpose of the partnership is to propagate the knowledge of biopesticides for vegetable defense, guaranteeing that the producer finds more options for crop protection products within the integrated plague management system.

"The idea is not to propose the replacement of chemical management for biological factors but to add technologies for effective and sustainable control,” stated Borsari. ABCBio was responsible for guaranteeing access to technical content on all macro-biological and microbiological control agents registered in Brazil.

Fabio Kagi, assistant manager of innovation and sustainability at ANDEF, explained the importance of including the tool allowing requests to agencies used for biological control. “Biological products have a set of peculiarities that should be taken into account in integrated management programs,” Kagi noted. “The records of natural enemies have been added to almost 600 existing records of agricultural plagues, and all the content is inter-related and totally free,” added Kagi.

Júlio Sérgio de Britto, general coordinator of agrochemicals under Brazil’s Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, and Supply, affirmed that the studies developed at the private level go hand-in-hand with the works developed by public institutions. “Every project developed with the proposal of providing more information, as in the case of DefesaVegetal.net, attends also to a demand from the public sector,” remarked Britto. “So it is in our interest, being from the public sector, to push production projects and the dissemination of knowledge.”