Neem and Related Natural Products

Although botanical insecticides once held a position of importance in the grower’s arsenal of plant protection products, they were almost completely displaced in most industrialized countries by synthetic insecticides in the 1950s and 1960s. However, increasing documentation of the negative environmental and health impacts of synthetic neurotoxic insecticides and increasingly stringent government regulation of pesticides has resulted in renewed interest in the development and use of botanical pest management products In spite of this interest, there remain only a handful of botanical insecticides in use in North America and Europe, with few new products on the threshold of commercialization (1 –3 ).