Functional Plants for Ecological Control of Agricultural Pests
A special issue of Plants (ISSN 2223-7747). This special issue belongs to the section "Plant Protection and Biotic Interactions".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 September 2025 | Viewed by 239
Special Issue Editors
Interests: plant-insect relationship; plant resistant to pests; environmental entomology and climate change biology; insect physiology and insect ecology; ecological control of pests
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: insect ecology and pest management; climate change; plant resistant to pests; environmental entomology; ecological control of pests
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: plant-insect interaction, plant defense; nutrient physiology in insects; insect ecology; insect physiology and toxicology; ecological control of pests
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Currently, all trades and professions are focused on global ecological and green transformations. Agriculture is also undergoing ecological and green transformations pertaining to crop production from high inputs of fossil fertilizers to utilizing organic fertilizers and green manures, and from high inputs of chemical pesticides to utilizing green pesticides and ecological control tactics. For the ecological control of agricultural pests (including insects, pathogens, weeds, etc.), functional plants have great advantages and high potential application efficiency.
Functional plants are those with specific ecological functions in agroecosystem, e.g., trap plants, repellent plants, insectary plants, nectar plants, banker plants, accompany plants, and even functional crops and cover crops, etc., due to their unique ecological roles, and functional plants are increasingly attracting the interest of farmers, researchers, scientists, and even government officials, as they are utilized for the control and management of agricultural pests during field production. Moreover, many types of functional plants are also commonly used as Chinese medicinal herbs with high medicinal values for farmers to obtain high incomes as they cultivate these plants in fields. And many functional components and active substances can also be extracted from these functional plants to make plant-derived pesticides used as green pesticides instead of chemical pesticides for the ecological control of agricultural pests.
Prof. Dr. Fajun Chen
Dr. Xiaoling Tan
Dr. Xiaoguang Liu
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- functional plants
- agricultural pests
- ecological control of pests
- green control of pests
- landscape layout
- diversity utilization
- plant chemistry
- plant-derived pesticides
- resistance and susceptibility of plants (including transgenic resistant crops, e.g., transgenic Bt crops)
- conservation for natural enemies
- refuge effect for natural enemies
- bridge effects for natural enemies
- attraction and repellence of plant VOCs
- plant–insect interaction
- insect biodiversity
- pest monitoring
- ecological agriculture
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