Pesticides

I reasearched into pesticides because pesticides are a big part of Canadian farming and bring in alot of money for the farming industry. I am interested in this topic becasue I know alot of people who farm and likely use pesticides to aid in their farming.

Some facts that I looked into on pesticides were some of the different types, starting with insecticides this type of pesticide is directed towards killing insects(1). Next up is herbicides, these pesticides aim to eliminate contesting plant growth such as weeds around crops(1). Rodenticides are a type of pesticide that target rodents trying to get into crops(2). Last there is fungicides which stop the spread of diseases and fungi amougst crops(1).

Another topic in pesticides that I looked into was from the earliest uses to now, one of the earliest forms of pestides tousands of years ago was sulfur dusting(3), and that wasn’t likely used it large quantities. When we look at todays use, in just 2006-2007 2.4 megatonnes of pesticides were used, and 22% of that was by the US(3).

The last thing I looked into was natural pesticides, these pesticides come from tabacco plant extracts and are know as botanic pesticides(4). Nicotine in the tobacco is the alkaloid that gives the tabacco extract its pesticidal properties(4).

References:

1. https://croplife.ca/facts-figures/pesticides-in-canada/
2. https://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/chemicals/pesticides/general.html
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pesticide
4. Wenda Wang, Jianhua Yao, & Xiufang Cao. (2022). Alkaloids from Tobacco Leaves: Isolation, Alkaloid Contents, and Potential Application as a Natural Pesticide against Bactrocera dorsalis. BioResources, 17(1), 1764–1780. https://doi.org/10.15376/biores.17.1.1764-1780