In Korea, in 1970s and 1980s a few research for biological control program was conducted mostly for agricultural field crop and forest insect pests. Since 1990s when the greenhouse cultivation area increased significantly and the insect pest problem thereby increased highly, the needs for practical biological control program for greenhouse pests increased accordingly. In 1990s especially when Tetranychus urticae in strawberry, Trialeurodes vaporariorum and Liriomyza bryoniae in cucumber and tomato, and Aphis gossypii in cucumber became a major problem, demand for use of commercially produced biological control agents such as Phytoseiulus persimilis, Encasia formosa, and Aphidius colemani increase rapidly but these commercially available biological control agents in foreign countries were not allowed to be imported at that time. Therefore, temporary pilot study for application these natural enemies began in mid 1990s by the National Institute of Agricultural Science and Technology, RDA and some provincial agricultural extension center. The greenhouse biological control research and natural enemy industry began to flourish when 7 species of exotic biological control agents were officially permitted for import in 2003 and the promotion program for horticultural insect pest management using natural enemies was implemented from 2005. Unfortunately, when this promotion program was terminated in 2010 the Korean natural enemy industry began to collapse and also biological control research activity decreased significantly. In this presentation, past and current status of the biological control research activity and natural enemy industry in Korea will be addressed and the future perspective will be cautiously discussed.

• Joon-Ho Lee(Entomology Program, Department of Agricultural Biotechnology, Seoul National University)