Overview of insecticide formulations used against storage pests

Abstract: The aim of the presentation was to shortly overview historical and recent advances
in a development of pesticide formulations against storage and food industry pests. Several
emerging technologies of pesticide formulations have been identified: they include electrostatic dusts or sprays, nanoparticles, hydrogels, inert baits with synthetic attractants, biodegradable cyanogenic protective coatings of grain, and RNA-based gene silencing compounds encapsulated in baits. One of the most promising protective technologies for developing countries are various types of hermetic bags. The previous literature review by Stejskal et al. (2021) demonstrated that new technological advances have sparked renewed research interest also in the optimization of conventional methods such as insecticide aerosols, residuals sprays, fumigants, grain protectants, and inert gases and vacuum. Food industry is interested in research and development of improved forms of packages containing inert gases (N2, CO2) or vacuum. In this consequent paper, we attempted to quantify the research effort (expressed as the number of published peer-reviewed articles in Web of Science database) devoted to different pesticide formulations for control of stored pests in the last seven decades (1950-2022). The lowest number publications was recorded for smoke generators and aerosols (n = 78). The highest number of published articles was recorded for fumigants (n= 553), diatomaceous earth (n = 391), grain protectants (n = 372), and insecticide spray surface treatment (n = 273). The presentation shortly informs about a new project HORIZONT 2020 (novIGRain) dealing with a development of a new formulation of a grain protectant in EU and storage pest resistance.