S19: Discovery of natural products with utility for agriculture

Natural products have played a strong role in crop protection to enable improved agricultural productivity.  From ancient times farmers used elemental sulfur & natural extracts to protect their crops against plant pests.  The advent of synthetic pest control agents in the mid 20^th century fueled a green revolution by improving agricultural yields & lowering production costs.  The development of potent insecticidal pyrethroids from the plant derived pyrethrums led scientists to explore natural products for new leads for crop protection.  This presentation will review the role of natural compounds from microbial sources in the development of more effective crop protection agents.  Natural products such as bialaphos, and spinosyn have been directly fermented for agricultural use.  Also, natural compounds such as the strobilurins were used as templates for the synthesis of new Ag. products.  Recently a number of new natural product derived structures with agricultural utility have been discovered.  Exploitation of these new lead structures will continue to expand the importance of natural products in global crop protection.