Safety of Entomopathogenic fungi to vertebrates

  • Jucelaine Haas Barth da Costa Universidade Paranaense - UNIPAR
  • Kimiyo Shimomura Haida Universidade Paranaense – UNIPAR
Keywords: Safety, Non-Target Organisms, Beauveria bassiana, Metarhizium anisopliae.

Abstract

Due to the problems caused by the indiscriminate use of pesticides, biological control has been used to control the population of insects in agriculture and stored beans. Entomopathogenic fungi are among the organisms that are used, specially Beauveria bassiana and Metarhizium anisopliae. Despite their expected safety to non-target organisms, it may be possible that these microbian control agents affect beneficial invertebrates and even vertebrates. It is certain that they may cause abnormalities in fish embryos and infection in other vertebrates, but there are recent studies that testify the safety of M. anisopliae to Astynax scabripinis, and of B. bassiana to Gallus domesticus. Thus, due to the existence of conflicting information, it is evident that more tests are required in order to verify the safety of entomopathogenic fungi to vertebrates.

Author Biographies

Jucelaine Haas Barth da Costa, Universidade Paranaense - UNIPAR
Mestre em Agronomia pela Universidade Estadual do Oeste do Paraná – UNIOESTE; Docente da Universidade Paranaense – Unipar. E-mail: jubarth@gmail.com
Kimiyo Shimomura Haida, Universidade Paranaense – UNIPAR
Mestre em Ciência de Alimentos pela Universidade Estadual de Londrina – UEL; Docente da Universidade Paranaense – UNIPAR. E-mail: ksh@certto.com.br
Published
2009-08-10
Section
Environment