Pesticides formulations are defined as mixture of active ingredients with other materials to form stable, effective, safe, easily applied and acceptable to the user products.
The literal meaning of pesticide is ’pest killer’. Pesticides are not modern inventions, as they have long been used to control pests and diseases in agriculture. In 2500 BC the Sumerian used sulphur compounds for insect control.
Experts classify pesticides according to their function. For example, insecticide controls insects, fungicide (fungi), nematocides (for nematodes), rodenticides for vertebrate poisons and herbicide control weeds.
Some pesticides control more than one group of pest and are therefore in more than one pesticide class.
Pesticides are used so extensively because they provide many benefits to farmers and by extension to consumers.
This include increase productivity accompanied by an increase in efficiency either directly or indirectly has been use of pesticide.
Herbicides also allowed corn to be planted earlier in the growing season and this resulted in a higher yield potential. Before herbicides, corn had to be planted later so that the first flushes of weeds could be killed with tillage.
Higher yields enable the feeding of a growing world population, and reserves land for uses such as recreation and nature conservation that otherwise would need to have been turned into productive agricultural land.
The application of pesticide in agriculture
