Various insect pests and plant disease can outbreak in a field. For the effective control of pests and plant diseases during crop cultivation, farmers simultaneously or sequentially spray various eco-friendly agricultural materials (EFAM), chemical pesticides and microbial control agents on the same fields. It was reported that many agrochemicals are harmful to entomopathogenic fungi, especially some fungicides with broad spectrum activity that are routinely applied for the control of plant diseases. In addition, some pesticides may antagonize the potential insecticidal activity and efficiency of entomopathogenic fungi. Therefore, sometimes the utilization of fungal entomopathogen in forestry and agricultural production is limited because of the undesirable interference from some fungicides and pesticides. There is little research that examines the compatibility of these EFAMs with entomopathogenic fungi and the influence of EFAMs on the control efficacy of mycopesticides. We conducted a study of influence of pretreated eco-friendly agricultural materials on control efficacy of Isaria javanica isolate against sweet potato whitefly.

Entomopathogenic fungus is a useful control agent to sucking type insect such as whitefly and aphid. The fungi are influenced by some environmental factors such as relative humidity, temperature and UV and cause slow and fluctuation in pest control efficacy. Especially, UV kills conidia or spores of entomopathogenic fungi and a mycopesticide using fungi has short control period in field. UV intensity changes from season to season. Survival rate of entomopathognic fungi treated may differ from seasons and will show different control efficacy. Therefore, we conducted a study to estimate the persistence of an Isaria javanica isolate, which was already reported as sweet potato whitefly control agent, in potted greenhouse soil planted different crops. The number of survival spore decreased gradually and differ from seasons.

As ubiquitous organisms entomopathogenic fungi may natually occur within environment including phylloplanes and soil or deposite and survive for a while after spraying a fungal suspension to control insect pest. The existence of pathogenic fungi is a threat to arthropods foraging for food and oviposition sites. The detection and avoidance of pathogens is important for host survival, longevity and ultimate fitness. Although entomopathogenic fungi are ubiquitous worldwide and act as common natural enemies of many invertebrate species, very few studies have conducted abiut the detection and avoidance of pathogenic fungi by insect pest. We have studied that an insect pest can recognize a high virulence fungi on crop surface, avoid oviposition and don’t enter the field treated their pathogen.