September 1998, Volume 19 No. 3

• Editorial
• General News
• Biorational
• Training News
• Internet Round-Up
• Announcements
• New Books
• Conference Reports
• Forthcoming Meetings

Announcements

Are you producing a newsletter, holding a meeting, running an organization or rearing a natural enemy that you want other biocontrol workers to know about? Send us the details and we will announce it in BNI.

Biocontrol in Brazil

A new edition of a catalogue of Brazilian institutions working on the biological control of insects has been published*. This provides, for each of 169 laboratories involved in insect biocontrol, up-to-date information on staff, the pest species and natural enemies under investigation and projects being undertaken. Comprehensive indexing of all these makes this a very useful publication for anyone interested in finding out who is doing what in this field in Brazil.

*Dias, J. M. C. S.; Pires, C. S. S.; Magalhães, B. P.; Fontes, E. M. G. (eds) (1998) Catálogo de Instituições Brasilieras que Trabalham em Controle Biológico de Insetos, 2nd edition. Brasilia; EMBRAPA-Cenargen, Documents, No. 28, 198 pp. ISSN 0102-0110.
Available from: EMBRAPA Recursos Genéticos e Biotecnologia, SAIN Parque Rural - Final da Av. W-5 Norte, Caixa Postal 02372, 70770-900 Brasilia, DF, Brazil.
Fax: + 55 61 340 3624

...and at EMBRAPA

The status of the biological control of insects was assessed in the EMBRAPA system, based on the above publication and data collected in July 1997. Thirty-seven laboratories in 22 stations were identified as active in the field. Nineteen of the laboratories work on the biological control of insects in vegetable systems, two on insects in animals, and one in both. Twenty-one research lines involving 165 scientists, 35 graduate students and 89 internships were identified. The most common research areas are: inundative biological control (21 projects), augmentative biological control (19), surveys and identifications of natural enemies (14), potential evaluation in the laboratory (ten), ecology (eight) and germplasm conservation (seven). Based on the number of stations where they are being studied, the most commonly studied target insects, in descending order of frequency, are: Anticarsia gemmatalis, Spodoptera frugiperda, Nezara viridula, Haematobia irritans, Tuta absoluta, Diabrotica speciosa, Helicoverpa zea, Cerotoma arcuata, Diatraea saccharalis and Anthonomus grandis. The principal control agents studied, again in order of descending importance, are Bacillus thuringiensis, Metarhizium anisopliae, Beauveria bassiana, Trichogramma sp., Bacillus sphaericus and Onthophagus gazella.

Contact: J. M. C. S. Dias, B. P. Magalhães, C. C. S. Pires and E. M. G. Fontes, EMBRAPA-Cenargen, C. Postal 2372, CEP 70849-970, Brasilia, DF, Brazil.