Development of a New Production System for Baculovirus Pesticides

Insects are major pests of plant and animal food and fiber and also vector diseases causing millions of human deaths and untold suffering annually. Moreover, our efforts to control insect pests have caused massive environmental contamination and continue to cause human and animal fatalities annually. Biotechnology offers alternatives to conventional pest control that have great promise although, like other technological innovations, there is resistance to its use and it carries some risks with which we have little prior experience. One increasingly important aspect of biotechnology is its potential to replace conventional products with process and materials that are more environmentally sound. Paratechs' biology-based baculovirus production (B3P) technology is an example of such a `green' process in that it has the potential to produce biopesticides that can be used to replace chemical pesticides and relies upon natural biological processes rather than synthetic chemicals to do so. Such a technology would have important commercial impact and also have beneficial environmental and health impacts.