ABSTRACT
The use of chemicals to control pests dates back more than 1000 years B.C. to the Chinese, who discovered that sulfur was effective as a fumigant; in the sixteenth century, they discovered that arsenic could be used as an insecticide [220]. Tobacco leaf (nicotine) and the seed of Strychnos nux vomica (strychnine) were used as rodenticides in the eighteenth century [252], and the insecticidal active botanicals rotenone, derived from the root of Derris eliptica, and pyrethrum, from the flowers of chrysanthemums, were used as insecticides in the mid-1800s. The Bordeaux mixture (copper sulfate, lime, calcium hydroxide, and water) was introduced in France for the control of mildew in grapes in 1880 [220]. Paris Green (copper arsenite) and later calcium arsenite were used extensively at the turn of the century to control the Colorado potato beetle [252].
