ABSTRACT
Control of insect pests represents one of the major input costs of world agricultural production and consumes billions of dollars annually, predominantly in chemical pesticides and lost production. Insect control with pesticides is, however, becoming more problematic in both developed and third world countries. Farmers and consumers are increasingly aware of the environmental and ecological impacts of excessive pesticide use. As the target insects are repeatedly exposed to the same pesticide chemistries, they often develop heritable resistance to those pesticides and require the use of higher and higher doses or more toxic insecticide blends to achieve economic levels of pest control. Plant breeders, seed companies, and farmers are now turning to biotechnological solutions to these important pest problems in agriculture because of the environmental and economic advantages of deploying inbuilt insect control strategies as opposed to external applications. Over the past 10 years, transgenic crops protected against insects have been generated in some of the important broadacre crops, including cotton and corn, as well as in horticultural crops such as potato, and have been released commercially (1).
