Entomopathogenic Fungi for Sustainable Plant Protection: Advances, Challenges, and Pathways to Adoption

Entomopathogenic fungi (EPF) have significant potential in pest management despite biopesticides representing only 2.0-2.5% of the world pesticide market. This review examines the status of EPF by highlighting key successes and exploring challenges and opportunities for expanding their market share. EPF adoption faces solvable technical challenges, but major barriers from entrenched agricultural practices, overstrict regulations, low promotion, and poor stakeholder coordination persist. Legislative reforms that simplify registration combined with increased research and development could reduce costs, improve quality control, and enable multi-strain applications. Investment in social and cultural studies is essential to raise user awareness of the interconnectedness of agriculture, environment, food safety, and health. Despite strengthening social drivers, EPF adoption remains sluggish, constrained by weak retailer promotion and farmers' continued preference for conventional pesticides, which are viewed as simpler and less risky. Advancing EPF adoption demands coordinated engagement among scientists, farmers, industry, and policy makers, underpinned by public-private partnership and extension programs and enabled by effective knowledge-sharing platforms to overcome barriers and accelerate global implementation.