Abstract
Some 10,000 species of the more than 1 million species of insects are crop-eating, and of these, approximately 700 species worldwide cause most of the insect damage to man's crops, in the field and in storage. Humanoids have been on earth for more than 3 million years, while insects have existed for at least 250 million years. We can only guess, but the first materials likely used by our primitive ancestors to reduce insect annoyance were mud and dust spread over their skin to repel biting and tickling insects, a practice resembling the habits of elephants, swine, and water buffalo. Under these circumstances, mud and dust would be classed as repellents, a category of insecticides. Historians have traced the use of pesticides to the time of Homer around 1000 B.C., but the earliest records of insecticides pertain to the burning of "brimstone" (sulfur) as a fumigant. Pliny the Elder (A.D. 23-79) recorded most of the earlier insecticide uses in his Natural History. Included among these were the use of gall from a green lizard to protect apples from worms and rot. Later, we find a variety of materials used with questionable results: extracts of pepper and tobacco, soapy water, whitewash, vinegar, turpentine, fish oil, brine, lye and many others. At the beginning of World War II (1940), our insecticide selection was limited to several arsenicals, petroleum oils, nicotine, pyrethrum, rotenone, sulfur, hydrogen cyanide gas, and cryolite. And it was World War II that opened the Chemical Era with the introduction of a totally new concept of insect control chemicals--synthetic organic insecticides, the first of which was DDT.Incluye 8 referencias bibliográficas.Some 10,000 species of the more than 1 million species of insects are crop-eating, and of these, approximately 700 species worldwide cause most of the insect damage to man's crops, in the field and in storage. Humanoids have been on earth for more than 3 million years, while insects have existed for at least 250 million years. We can only guess, but the first materials likely used by our primitive ancestors to reduce insect annoyance were mud and dust spread over their skin to repel biting and tickling insects, a practice resembling the habits of elephants, swine, and water buffalo. Under these circumstances, mud and dust would be classed as repellents, a category of insecticides. Historians have traced the use of pesticides to the time of Homer around 1000 B.C., but the earliest records of insecticides pertain to the burning of "brimstone" (sulfur) as a fumigant. Pliny the Elder (A.D. 23-79) recorded most of the earlier insecticide uses in his Natural History. Included among these were the use of gall from a green lizard to protect apples from worms and rot. Later, we find a variety of materials used with questionable results: extracts of pepper and tobacco, soapy water, whitewash, vinegar, turpentine, fish oil, brine, lye and many others. At the beginning of World War II (1940), our insecticide selection was limited to several arsenicals, petroleum oils, nicotine, pyrethrum, rotenone, sulfur, hydrogen cyanide gas, and cryolite. And it was World War II that opened the Chemical Era with the introduction of a totally new concept of insect control chemicals--synthetic organic insecticides, the first of which was DDT.