TY  - JOUR
T1  - Which Natural Products Merit Development as Insecticides? Prioritizing Candidates through Mechanism, Selectivity, Synergy, Chemical Stability, and Resistance Risk
A1  - Mateo Alvarez
A1  - Sofia Herrera
A1  - Diego Cruz
A1  - Helena Costa
JF  - Entomology and Applied Science Letters
JO  - Entomol Appl Sci Lett
SN  - 2349-2864
Y1  - 2025
VL  - 12
IS  - 3
DO  - 10.51847/sgwgGwFPZt
SP  - 1
EP  - 12
N2  - Natural products offer substantial chemical diversity for insect-control discovery, but bioactivity screening generates many more promising observations than development-ready candidates. The central difficulty is therefore not merely identifying plant-derived materials that affect insects, but deciding which chemically defined candidates justify continued investment. Acute laboratory potency is often privileged even when chemical identity, target relevance, selectivity, mixture interactions, environmental stability, formulation feasibility, and resistance liability remain uncertain. This article develops an original, explicitly non-validated prioritization structure that integrates these domains into a staged decision logic for natural-product insecticides. The approach distinguishes discovery evidence from development evidence and treats candidate value as conditional on the intended pest, life stage, exposure route, production system, formulation, environmental setting, and non-target compartments. The synthesis indicates that credible candidates combine reproducible chemical definition with biologically relevant activity, mechanism-supported but not overclaimed target evidence, an exposure-aware selectivity profile, manageable stability and delivery characteristics, and a resistance assessment that considers both the active substance and the complete formulated product. Synergy may increase activity or reduce the required amount of one component, but it does not inherently lower resistance risk and may enlarge uncertainty when interaction mechanisms, component ratios, or non-target responses are insufficiently characterized. Major limitations include heterogeneous assay designs, incomplete chemical standardization, limited cross-species testing, and weak linkage between laboratory effects and realistic use conditions. The principal implication is that candidate advancement should occur through sequential evidence gates rather than a potency-led ranking. Such a structure can improve transparency in research investment while remaining subject to prospective validation across chemically, taxonomically, and operationally diverse insect-control systems.
UR  - https://easletters.com/article/which-natural-products-merit-development-as-insecticides-prioritizing-candidates-through-mechanism-8r7yjkedpxkdaef
ER  -