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Risk Assessment of Microbial Pesticides II - Ecological Effects

Edited by:
Abdulrahim T. Alkassab, PhD, Julius Kühn-Institut, Germany
Jens Pistorius, PhD, Julius Kühn-Institut, Germany
Shannon Borges, MSc, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, USA

Submission Status: Open   |   Submission Deadline: 30 November 2024


Environmental Sciences Europe is calling for submissions to our Collection on Risk Assessment of Microbial Pesticides II - Environmental Effects, a complementary Collection to Risk Assessment of Microbial Pesticides I - Human Health published in Environmental Health.

This Collection is focused on problem formulation for ecological risk assessment of microbial pesticides and finding solutions to advance hazard testing with non-target organisms. These advances will help to inform regulatory decisions about microbial pesticides.

Image credits: © ollo / Getty Images / iStock

New Content ItemThis Collection supports and amplifies research related to  SDG 2 – Zero Hunger, SDG 6 – Clean Water and Sanitation, SDG 12 – Responsible Consumption and Production, SDG 15 – Life on Land.

Meet the Guest Editors

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Abdulrahim T. Alkassab, PhD, Julius Kühn-Institut, Germany

Abdulrahim T. Alkassab works at the Julius Kühn-Institut (JKI), Federal Research Centre for Cultivated Plants. His research activities focus on bee health, i.e., honeybees, bumblebees, and solitary bees, in relation to the exposure to pesticides, including bio-pesticides, and nutrition status. He is active in the area of risk assessment of plant protection products on bees. He is also active in international expert groups, including within the ICP-PR, OECD and EFSA. He serves as reviewer in various international journals and member of editorial board in the journal “Crop health”.

Jens Pistorius, PhD, Julius Kühn-Institut, Germany

Dr. Jens Pistorius has worked on exposure, effects and risk assessment with bees as well as bee poisoning incidents for the last 2 decades. As head of the Institute for Bee Protection, a German federal research institute and risk assessment authority, the, his main research focus covers current ecotoxicological and agroecological topics with both honeybees and wild bees in agricultural landscapes. His ecotoxicological research focuses on issues related to the risk assessment methodology, risk evaluation und the investigation of suspected bee poisoning incidents as well as contamination of bee matrices and investigation of efficacy risk mitigation measures. He collaborates with national and international research organisations and authorities, and engages in relevant committees on different levels. He has been a scientific advisor for risk assessment schemes in the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA), United States (US-EPA), Brazil (IBAMA) as well as the embodiment of guidelines (e.g. EPPO, OECD) and also FAO and is the chair of the ICPPR Bee Protection Group and assists advancing test methodologies.

Shannon Borges, MSc, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, USA

Shannon Borges is Deputy Director of the Biopesticides and Pollution Prevention Division within the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Pesticide Programs. She has over 19 years of experience in ecological risk assessment of pesticides, the majority of which has been focused on microbial pesticides and products of biotechnology. Shannon has research experience in exposure and hazard assessment of environmental contaminants to wildlife as well as experience in the non-profit sector leading a program to increase detection of wildlife-pesticide incidents.

About the Collection

Microbial pesticides are part of a sustainable agriculture strategy, but due to their unique nature, tools for assessing hazards and risks require different approaches compared to chemical pesticides. This Collection is focused on problem formulation for ecological risk assessment of microbial pesticides and finding solutions to advance hazard testing with non-target organisms. These advances will help to inform regulatory decisions about microbial pesticides.

Microbial pesticides are valuable alternatives to conventional chemical pesticides that are safer for humans and the environment and are critically important in integrated agricultural production systems. Some existing regulatory systems rely on testing methods that were developed for conventional chemicals and are not fit-for-purpose for microbial pesticides. Otherwise, where guidance that is available specifically for microbial pesticides, it is highly flexible so as to accommodate many types of microorganisms and test species; however, it provides insufficient information to develop robust testing protocols. Significant challenges exist for non-target organism hazard testing and coupled with a lack of clear guidance toward robust testing methods, these challenges can result in risk assessments with complex uncertainties. Such complexities can lead to delays in bringing innovation to agriculture and the bioeconomy and increased resource costs.

This Collection brings together original research and review articles to outline the issues, identify knowledge gaps, and highlight advances toward improvements in microbial pesticide non-target organism hazard testing and ecological risk assessment.

The Collection Risk Assessment of Microbial Pesticides II - Environmental Effects supports the following Sustainable Development Goals:
SDG 2: Zero Hunger as it promotes sustainable agriculture;
SDG 6: Clean Water and Sanitation as it promotes improved water quality by reducing agricultural and other pest control chemicals in the environment;
SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production as microbial pesticides reduce environmental impacts and ensure sustainable production patterns, supporting the bioeconomy;
SDG 15: Life on Land as microbial pesticides promote sustainable agriculture and reduce its impacts on natural systems and non-target organisms, including species of conservation concern).

  1. The evaluation of the impact of pesticides on non-target species, like bees, is a crucial factor in registration procedures. Therefore, standardized test procedures have been developed on OECD level assessing ...

    Authors: Karoline Wueppenhorst, Kevin Nack, Silvio Erler, Jens Pistorius and Abdulrahim T. Alkassab
    Citation: Environmental Sciences Europe 2024 36:169
    Content type: Research Published on:

  2. The Huangpu River serves as a vital water source for around 24 million individuals residing in the metropolitan area of Shanghai. Despite this, elevated levels of heavy metals persist in the sediments of the r...

    Authors: Yalong Li, Yaojen Tu, Gaojun Li, Yali Pu, Meichuan Chien and Yanping Duan
    Citation: Environmental Sciences Europe 2024 36:137
    Content type: Research Published on:

Submission Guidelines

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This Collection welcomes submission of research articles, review articles, comment papers, perspective papers, and short communications. Should you wish to submit a different article type, please read our submission guidelines to confirm that type is accepted by the journal. 

Articles for this Collection should be submitted via our submission system, Snapp. Please, select the appropriate Collection title “Risk Assessment of Microbial Pesticides II - Ecological Effects" under the “Details” tab during the submission stage.

Articles will undergo the journal’s standard peer-review process and are subject to all the journal’s standard policies. Articles will be added to the Collection as they are published.

The Editors have no competing interests with the submissions which they handle through the peer-review process. The peer-review of any submissions for which the Editors have competing interests is handled by another Editorial Board Member who has no competing interests.