CABI News

The Third International Congress of Biological Control (ICBC3) has called for greater understanding and collaboration on biological control in a national and international policy context to sustainably fight food security and food safety threatening crop pests and diseases.

World experts in safer-to-use and more sustainable biological control products, that can be used as part of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) plans, gathered to share their latest knowledge and research at the ICBC3 held in San José, Costa Rica.

CABI was a co-organiser of the congress along with the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock of Costa Rica, the University of Costa Rica (UCR) and the International Organisation for Biological Control (IOBC).

The Minister of Agriculture and Livestock of Costa Rica, Victor Carvajal, attended the opening ceremony and gave a welcome speech which was also attended by the Director General of IICA, Manual Otero, and Professor Maria del Milagro Granados from UCR.

Wide breadth of biological control targets

The congress is unique in serving as a meeting point for scientists and practitioners from universities, research institutes, governmental, non-governmental and private-sector organizations who are working on a wide breadth of biological control targets including insect pests, plant and animal diseases, weeds, and invasive vertebrates.

In total 23 scientific session topics and five panel discussion topics formed a packed programme with various cross-cutting issues that included biocontrol safety, pre-release studies, post-release evaluation, social-economic studies, regulation and policy-related, and biological control.

Dr Nick Mills, for instance, was a keynote speaker in plenary session 1 – organized by Dr Martin Hill – and spoke about ‘Biological control for One Health. In the same session Dr Raghu Sathyamurthy gave a presentation entitled ‘A nod to the past and present, with an eye to the future: advances needed to sustain the next chapter(s) of biological control’.

Scientists also discussed the role molecular tools in biological control, community engagement prior release, long-term impact/cost savings of biocontrol, regulatory issues hindering market accessibility, and the uptake of biological control.

Uptake of biological control

Dr Ulrich Kuhlmann, CABI’s Executive Director, Global Operations, moderated two plenary sessions. These included a panel discussion focussed on what needs to be done to improve the uptake of biological control.

He also organized a session involving keynote speakers Dr Tara Gariepy and Professor Ted Turlings. Dr Gariepy spoke about the use of molecular tools to unravel host-parasitoid associations in biological control of invasive insect pests and Professor Turlings presented on herbivore-induced plant volatiles and how they can be exploited for targeted biocontrol.

Meanwhile, several CABI scientists – including Dr Belinda Luke, Dr Ivan Rwomushana, Dr Marc Kenis, Dr Justice Tambo, Kate Constantine, Dr Hariet Hinz, Dr Yelitza Colmenarez, Dr Feng Zhang, Dr Malvika Chaudhary, Dora Shimbwambwa and Lena Durocher-Granger – also took part in various sessions.

Dr Colmenarez, for example, took part in a session with Dr Lorena Barra Bucarei looking at the advance of applied biological control in Latin America while Dr Rwomushana joined Dr Marc Kenis to highlight recent advances in the classical biological control of alien invasive insects in sub-tropical Africa.

National and international policy context

The final plenary session of the four-day congress was entitled ‘Biological control in a national and international policy context’ and included organizers Dr Sheppard, Dr Hill, and Dr Sathyamurthy.

Dr Kuhlmann said, “Increasing trade and travel between nations has increased the number of plants and other non-native species arriving in new countries. Most of them come without the natural enemies that keep them in check in their native range.

“In the case of invasive plants, almost all the insects, fungal pathogens or nematodes that would normally inflict damage on them are not present, giving the plant an unfair advantage over its new neighbours.

“In order to ensure greater sustainable global food security amid challenges including climate change, it is imperative that policy at a national and international level allows for greater sustainable natural solutions to crop pests and diseases without an overreliance on more harmful chemical pesticides.”

Prior to the start of the congress, the General Assembly of the IOBC was held where the Executive Committee of the IOBC Global outlined how it will steer the organization for the next four years.

The previous International Congress of Biological Control was held online in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and built upon the First International Congress of Biological Control held in Beijing, China, and the First International Conference of Biological Control held in Bengaluru, India, during 2018.

Additional information

Main image: The Third International Congress of Biological Control (ICBC3) has called for greater understanding and collaboration on biological control in a national and international policy context to sustainably fight food security and food safety threatening crop pests and diseases.

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