~ 7 ~ Journal of Entomology and Zoology Studies 2017; 5(6): 07-13 E-ISSN: 2320-7078 P-ISSN: 2349-6800 JEZS 2017; 5(6): 07-13 © 2017 JEZS Received: 03-09-2017 Accepted: 04-10-2017 Riffat Sultana Department of Zoology, University of Sindh, Jamshoro, Sindh, Pakistan Santosh Kumar Department of Zoology, University of Sindh, Jamshoro, Sindh, Pakistan Durdane Yanar Faculty of Agriculture, Plant Protection Department, Gaziosmanpasa University, Tokat-Turkey Correspondence Riffat Sultana Department of Zoology, University of Sindh, Jamshoro, Sindh, Pakistan Application of entomopathogenic fungi for insect pests control Riffat Sultana, Santosh Kumar and Durdane Yanar Abstract The grasshoppers and locust are one of the very familiar groups of insects to mankind. They cause significant damage to crops and cultivators protect their crops by using different chemical pesticides which put harmful effects on the human as well as on environment. During current era biological control is recommended to reduce the numbers of insects in field. In the complex of biological control agents entomopathogenic fungi are more effective and most successfully utilized insect pathogen. In this respect Aspergillus, Beauveria, Metarhizium, Lecanicillium spp. are gaining importance in the crop pest control in recent years due to the simpler, easier and cheaper mass production techniques. Many entomopathogenic species registered world-wide for insect’s control but this practice is currently under consideration as a potential alternative to chemical insecticides for insects control in Pakistan. Present study focused on control of acridid because member of this group are major agricultural pests. They destroyed the rice, sugarcane, wheat, maize and fodder crops in everywhere. For control of this pest several pesticides of billion rupees are used indiscriminately in every year. So, there should be suitable, beneficial and cheap alternative of these poisonous chemical. For this purpose the biological control is very important therefore, an attempt was made to introduce pathogenic fungi, against the reduction of acridid population in Sindh. Keywords: Insects, Microbial, Application, Entomopathogenic Fungi, Acridid 1. Introduction Entomopathogenic fungi are regarded as bio-pesticides and expected to have a significant and increasing role for the control of locust and grasshopper in world including Pakistan [60] . This microbial agent commonly famous as myco-insecticides that has a great potential to kill locust and grasshopper species beside this, it also beneficial to control flies, beetles and aphids in field [62] . Pathogenic fungi penetrate into host external surface after utilization of pathogenic fungi large No. of grasshopper and locust were killed this finding suggests that this microbial agent is very useful against pest species. Microbial agents that include: bacteria, virus, nematodes, protozoan and pathogenic fungi are good bio-control agents [45] stated that pathogenic fungi are very important and interesting bio-control discipline due to its observed capacity that lead to formation of epizootics. Earlier, many workers have done research on this i-e [18, 19, 54, 70, 20, 26, 55, 60] . About 35 genera comprise on 400 species/sub-species of pathogenic fungi have been identified. These identified species having close association with more than 1800 insect species in field and mostly killed the wide varieties of insect’s population in their favorable season [25] . Pathogenic fungi are cosmopolitan in their distribution and diversity; they put cruel attack on the insect’s population. Due to their eco-friend and bio-persistence behavior and easily preference to kill pest species at different developmental stages, their utilization increase day-by-day. Now large numbers of pathogenic microorganisms are available for evaluation against grasshopper and locust in the world. Microorganism’s priority is given to the entomopathogenic fungi and entomopoxvirus that are stable for prolonged period of storage and application. This microbial agent is considered very useful in IPM [32] . Consequently present attempt has been made to adopt biological control measures against pest by using the myco-insecticides from this region. A detail study has been done by [15, 50, 23, 4] to assess the mortality ratio of target pest after treating with various entomopathogenic fungi. But still now, nothing has been published with exception of [28, 52, 17] . But, mostly these scientists worked under environment constant regions that are condition for more infection and could not consider how this behavior and the overall impact of pathogen might change under more realistic, variable condition experiment in the field.