Hi, I think these groups are pretty good:

http://www.slu.se/en/collaborative-centres-and-projects/centre-for-biological-control-cbc-ny/

http://www.aab.org.uk/contentok.php?id=376

Cheers, Nadine

Hi Calvo,

Recently, many groups now are not just investigating the aspects of biological control but working on wider platform as plant insect interactions or chemical ecology in which tritrophic interaction covers the area of biological control.

Here you go some good groups working on tritrophic interactions

John Pickett group- Ted Turlings group- Marcel Dicke group- Martin Heil group- Caroline Muller group –SLU as mentioned above by Dr. Nadine- Gary Felton group- Jeffrey Harvey group- James Tumlinson group- Cesar Rodriguez-Saona group- Junji Takabayashi group.

Regards, Islam

Frieds i am having very good biocontrol lab and large scale production units with all modern facilities if any body interested to do research here pl contact me Dr.shripad Kulkarni UAS Dharwad India

HI everyone

Thank you for your contributions and information. It will be very helpful to me.

The insect research group at ICIPE, www.icipe.org/ has long standing track record for classical and conversational biological control efforts in sub-Saharan Africa.

I think the best program in Biological Control in the World is the use of Baculovirus anticarsia in Brasil, in soybean, to control Anticarsia gemmatalis.

See: http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.ento.44.1.257

I wonder how you'd estimate best? Most publications? Most successful implementations of their ideas and approaches? Most successful in applying for funds? Most sophisticated methods for basic research? Etc.

There are many good or very good ones on their fields of research and specialisation, but I guess there's no best one as it's not comparable, since there are applied working groups with not so detailed and high-end methods (that may result in good rate of implementations) and others that do high-end lab work with new approaches that might never be used by farmers. And some do both more or less.

Dear Peter, thank you for your contribution. I agree with you, everything in this life is relative. But I have to say that the question was made long time ago beacuse i was looking for a good research group in biological control where I could send a temporary stay application. So I was interested, in general, which research groups could be considered good or best in their field. In other words, "BEST" understood as a good average in all the point that you have mentioned.

Regards

I am ScD in Plant Biotechnology and I work at the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry and Petrochemistry National Academy Sciences of Ukraine. I study of actual problem for modern agriculture: increase of plant resistance to parasitic nematodes with new ecologically safe plant growth regulators (PGRs) of natural origin created at my Institute and I research genetic mechanisms of their action. These regulators contain antiparasitic antibiotic aversectine C - metabolites of the soil streptomycete S. avermitilis and metabolites, i.e. aminoacids, fatty acids, polysaccharides, phytohormones, and microelements, of cultivated in vitro micromycete Cylindrocarpon оbtusiuscuilum 680, isolated out of Panax ginseng root system. I proposed the new strategy of nematode disease management: increase of plant resistance to nematodes by the way of inducing of RNA-interference process (RNAi or PTGS) in plant cells, i.e. inducing synthesis of small regulatory si/miRNA using new PR/PGP inducers with bio-protective and immune-modulating effects. Gene silencing was first demonstrated for the free-living nematode, Caenorhabditis elegans, and the underlying mechanism of RNAi has subsequently been studied in depth for this nematode. The impact of this work was recognized in 2006 by the award of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Andrew Fire and Craig Mello. Gene silencing mediated by either degradation or translation arrest of target RNA has roles in adaptive protection against pathogenic organisms, genome defense against mobile DNA elements and developmental regulation of gene expression. These silencing systems involve processing of two type small regulatory RNAs: microRNA (miRNA) and short interfering RNA (siRNA). In my investigations it was shown that new PGRs activate synthesis of small regulatory si/miRNA with specific anti-nematodic activity in the cells of plants that leads to inhibition of reproduction nematode larvae, decreasing accumulation of nematode in soil, improvement of plant growth and development and increase of their productivity. All my works are presented on the site:

https://bpci.academia.edu/VictoriaTsygankova

I hope for offers on cooperation.

My e-mail: [email protected]

Sincerely yours, Dr. Victoria Tsygankova

Hi,

You may want to search for prof Roberto Postali Parra and the enterprise BUG. They are from Brazil. Biological control lab from prof Parra gave rise to a lot of efficient field control and his student opened some applied biological control enterprises, mainly with Cotesia flavips and Tamarixia radiata. Brazil is a nice example of biological control that got out of the lab and reach the field in big areas.

Hi Calvo,

Here you go very good groups in plant insect interactions and biological control (or tritrophic interactions) particularly.

1- Marcel Dicke group  (http://www.wageningenur.nl/en/Expertise-Services/Chair-groups/Plant-Sciences/Laboratory-of-Entomology/Research.htm)

2- Ted Turlings group (http://www2.unine.ch/farce/page-14963_en.html)

But one important issue is that Which focus you are closely looking for?

Applicable, theoretical or ecological research themes.

May I abuse this discussion to promote our most recent paper on biocontrol?  I hope that we have cited at least some papers of most groups that do good research in the field of Biocontrol. However, I agree with Peter in that "the best group" would be hard to define and that the topic on which people work might be a more important selector than "quality" measured as number of publications!

Greetings, Martin

http://www.cell.com/trends/plant-science/fulltext/S1360-1385%2815%2900208-3

Nice paper Martin ... as usual. Hope to see you in Genval in a few days

Thanks a lot Martin for providing us such interesting & recent paper

thank you..i interesting about topic..because i still research biocontrol limacodidae with use Oecophylla...this is very difficult..I like we discuss about biocontrol on ecology for sustainable environment

hello, Is there any group or researcher who offer research on biological control for postdoc. If anyone of you have information then share with me.

explore Biological control research group of Prof. Martin Hill, Rhodes University, South Africa