Commercial Development of Biofungicides

The commercial development of biofungicides received a significant boost in recent years, primarily because of impressive progress in the isolation and characterization of novel strains of microorganisms that can fulfill the mam characteristics of a biofungicide, which are the consistent suppression of pathogens under field conditions, and easy mass production in standard fermentation facilities (1 , 2 ). Progress was initially slow because of the inherent properties of the natural isolates, most of which are obligatory parasites that require the presence of a host for propagation (3 ). With the meteoric development in recent years of new tools in industrial molecular biology, and, more specifically, in the area of fermentation technology, significant progress has been made in the commercial development of cost-effective biofungicides. The conceptual and methodological considerations leading to a commercially viable product for biological control of fungal diseases is the theme of the following discussion.