Insecticides world market

Methyl bromide has been identified as an ozone-depleting substance and is being gradually removed from world markets. Current legislation and plans call for the elimination of methyl bromide in most industrial countries by 2005, with possible exemptions for quarantine (UNEP, 1996). Currently there is an extensive search worldwide for products that are alternatives to methyl bromide (Kawakami, 1999). These alternatives are broadly defined and include components of management plans such as sanitation, monitoring, contact insecticides, heat treatments, and modified atmospheres, in addition to new fumigants (Batchelor, 1998). 

Wc cannot maintain our present high density of population in the developed world, nor deal with malnutrition in the developing world unless we preserve our food supply from attacks by insects and fungi and from competition by weeds. The world market for agrochemicals is over 10 000 000 000 per annum divided roughly equally between herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides,... 

The world market for crop protection chemicals is large, with sales worth 33.4 billion in 2007. Herbicides are the most valuable sector, worth 48.3% of the market in 2007, followed by fungicides and insecticides, valued at 24.3% and 24.0%, respectively. The remaining 3.4% of the market comprises products such as plant growth regulators. The market is mostly in Europe, North America, Asia and, increasin y, in Latin America, while the market in Africa is still relatively small. ... 

The EU currendy declares approximately 320.000 tons of active substances sold per year. This amount represents 25% of the total world market of PPPs. The most sold products are fungicides (43%), followed by herbicides (36%), insecticides (12%) and other pesticides (9%). 

In the world market, more than 90% of commercial biosensors are enzymatic, in particular, those that measure glucose, used by diabetics [79]. This kind of biosensors is very useful because if immobilized enzymes are sensitive to certain pollutants, these analytes can be easily measured. For example, biosensors based on the inhibition of acetylcholinesterase detect phosphorus insecticides and other inhibitors [80]. A comprehensive analysis showed that the developed enzymatic biosensors demonstrated reproducible, stable, and fast responses to the substrates to be measured. Unfortunately, the application of these biosensors can be restricted because of the dramatic decrease in the sensor response at increasing buffer capacity and ionic strength, pH-dependence of the enzyme kinetics, and cosubstrate limitation of the measured enzymatic reaction rate (the glucose sensor) [79]. Recently, Soldatkin et al. reported a complete review of some biopolymers used in enzymatic... 

The outline of the environmental health business is shown in Table I. This field includes indoor consumer products such as household insecticides, outdoor consumer products such as those for pest control, and public-health related products for mosquito abatement and professional vector control. All these products are required to have superior safety characteristics. The size of the world market for the environmental health business in terms of retail sales is also shown in Table I. The market size is estimated to be roughly 7.2 billion dollars overall, of which about 70%, or 5.0 billion dollars, represents the indoor use insecticide market. The size of the outdoor use insecticide and public health insecticide markets is 1.4 billion and 800 million dollars, respectively. 

In 2001, the world market for agricultural chemicals exceeded US 28 billion, with NAFTA (US, Canada, Mexico) and Europe accounting for over 50% of this total (Fig. I). Herbicides accounted for almost half of all sales, followed by insecticides (26%) and ftmgicides (21%). 

HCH, sometimes misleadingly termed benzene hexachloride (BHC), exists in a number of different isomeric forms of which the gamma isomer has valuable insecticidal properties. These were discovered during the 1940s, and HCH came to be widely used as an insecticide to control crop pests and certain ectoparasites of farm animals after the Second World War. Crude technical BHC, a mixture of isomers, was the first form of HCH to be marketed. In time, it was largely replaced by a refined product called lindane, containing 99% or more of the insecticidal gamma isomer. 

Synthetic pyrethroids now account for at least 30% of the world insecticide market and are rapidly replacing other agricultural chemicals for control of insect pests. Fenvalerate is one of the more widely used synthetic pyrethroid insecticides. It is derived from a combination of a-cyano-3-phenoxybenzyl alcohol and a-isopropyl phenylacetate ester. Technical fenvalerate is a mixture of four optical isomers, each occurring in equal amounts but with different efficacies against insect pests. Fenvalerate does not usually persist in the environment for >10 weeks, and it does not accumulate readily in the biosphere. Time for 50% loss (Tb 1/2) in fenvalerate-exposed amphibians, birds, and mammals was 6 to 14 h for reptiles, terrestrial insects, aquatic snails, and fish it was >14 h to <2 days and for various species of crop plants, it was 2 to 28 days. Fenvalerate degradation in water is due primarily to photoactivity, and in soils to microbial activity. Half-time persistence in nonbiological materials is variable, but may range up to 6 days in freshwater, 34 days in seawater, 6 weeks in estuarine sediments, and 9 weeks in soils. 

An uninformed farm population cannot be expected to purchase agricultural chemicals without the assistance of appropriate farm organizations. Neither can these farmers be expected to become interested in obtaining the best weapons for fighting insect and disease plagues unless these weapons can be properly demonstrated. DDT, for example, became a household expression the world over not necessarily because of its merits, but because of the way it was used and demonstrated in the most remote parts of the earth. The merits alone of a given product cannot be relied on to build a market for it abroad. This is especially true today with the many new insecticides that cause confusion even to the growers of the United States. 

Insect resistance and environmental pollution due to the repeated application of persistent synthetic chemical insecticides have led to an Increased interest in the discovery of new chemicals with which to control Insect pests. Synthetic insecticides, including chlorinated hydrocarbons, organophosphorus esters, carbamates, and synthetic pyrethroids, will continue to contribute greatly to the increases in the world food production realized over the past few decades. The dollar benefit of these chemicals has been estimated at about 4 per 1 cost (JJ. Nevertheless, the repeated and continuous annual use in the United States of almost 400 million pounds of these chemicals, predominantly in the mass agricultural insecticide market (2), has become problematic. Many key species of insect pests have become resistant to these chemicals, while a number of secondary species now thrive due to the decimation of their natural enemies by these nonspecific neurotoxic insecticides. Additionally, these compounds sometimes persist in the environment as toxic residues, well beyond the time of their Intended use. New chemicals are therefore needed which are not only effective pest... 

Pyrethrins and pyrethroids are probably the best known and safest classes of natural or synthetic insecticides, widely used in domestic and agricultural applications (1-7). Pyrethrins are natural insecticides derived from the Chrysanthemum cineraria flowers the plant extract, called pyrethrum, is a mixture of six isomers (pyrethrin I and II, cinerin I and II, jasmolin I and II) which was first used in China in the century AD, during the Chou Dinasty. The world pyrethrum market is worth half a billion US dollars [main producers are East Africa highlands (Kenia, Tanzania and Rwanda) and Australia] however, its availability is subject to cyclical trends, due to rains and relations with farmers, who face high harvest costs also due to the fact that the flowers have to be... 

In the developed world in markets such as small grain cereals, soybean, maize and rice, the value of the herbicide market is much larger than either insecticides or fungicides (Figure 1.1). This is because the econo-... 

Table 1.4 Estimated share of world insecticide market...

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