Pheromone-based pesticids

One of the major disadvantages of pesticides is that they indiscriminately destroy insects, beneficial or not. Due to their specificity, pheromones can target precisely one species or another. A specific approach allow also to use receptor agonists to attract only the benficial insects or recruit them as pollinators, predators or parasitoids.
Unravelling the insect communication systems will be the next major breakthrough for containing insect known to be major healthcare pests. These pests are among the most serious causes of disease and starvation. Mosquitoes, biting flies, chiggers, fleas and ticks spread infections to hundreds of millions of people each year. Malaria is probably the most well known and is a major killer, especially affecting children of some developing countries. At least half a billion people are contracting the disease annually due to the efficient transfer of the pasmodium parasite by the insect.