Pesticide Alternatives Use in Egypt: The Concept and Potential

Pest management programs include physical, mechanical, cultural, and legislative strategies, resistant varieties, activation of host plant defense mechanisms, biological control agents, and synthetic pesticides. Yet, the application of synthetic pesticides is the main control method, which heavily contaminates the environment and affects the quality of produced crops and the safety of humans. Therefore, scientists around the world and in Egypt are investigating numerous alternative approaches including plant natural extracts, specific secondary metabolites, intercropping crops (the allelopathic and/or defense inductive effects), and nanoformulations of secondary metabolites and/or pesticides. These alternatives showed promising potential as anti-pathogenic agents. The current chapter will accentuate the contribution of the Egyptian scientists in the area of using natural plant chemicals as pesticide alternatives or additives. Also, presented herein is a summary of the application of nanomaterials, nanoemulsions, nanoencapsulation, and nano-pesticides in the IPM systems. However, there are thousands of research articles and patents that describe the immense potential of nanotechnology and natural materials as alternatives to the synthetic pesticides. There is very limited number of registered commercial products either in Egypt or worldwide.