Downloaded by UNIV OF READING on June 3, 2018 | https://pubs.acs.org Publication Date: May 5, 1995 | doi: 10.1021/bk-1995-0584.pr001
Preface R A C H E L CARSON, 32 years ago in her book Silent Spring, discussed the dangers of certain chemicals used in industry, agriculture, and health care. Carson implicated DDT in particular for its persistence in the environment and its deleterious effects on off-target organisms. During and after the second World War, DDT was even used for treating humans for lice and related conditions. To a large extent, we can credit Rachel Carson and the publication of Silent Spring for many changes in public, industrial, and academic policy. In the book's last chapter, entitled "The Other Road," Carson pointed out alternatives to synthetic agrochemicals, such as the use of natural products and the development of male sterilization methods for insect control, and she encouraged the use of safer agrochemicals. During the following decades we witnessed the banning of DDT and many other polychlorinated hydrocarbons, including cyclodienes such as Aldrin and related insecticides. Improvement in the accuracy of analytical instruments and the development of newer and more sophisticated methods for toxicological testing have aided the progression toward newer and safer chemicals for agricultural and industrial uses. The overview chapter in this volume entitled "Bioassays in the Discovery Process of Agrochemicals" describes various methods used to evaluate biological activity. However, beyond activity, an agrochemical must show favorable properties relating to mammalian and fish toxicity, mutagenicity, teratogenicity, etc., for submission to government regulatory agencies for registration. As a result of the strict standards imposed by the industry on its research, we now have herbicides (sulfonylureas and imidazolinones) with application rates of grams rather than pounds per acre. We have safer, less persistent agrochemicals in place of highly chlorinated fungicides and insecticides. We continue to strive quite successfully to find increasingly safer chemicals for agrochemical uses. As with the previous three volumes, our goal is to inform the reader of the current trends in research for safe, efficient, biologically active chemicals. The organization of this book is similar to that of the preceding three volumes. After the overview chapter and a second chapter reviewing bioisosterism in agrochemicals, a section of chapters describes the discovery of new plant control agents. The following section deals with control of insects and acarids. The final section covers the control of fungal diseases. xiii Baker et al.; Synthesis and Chemistry of Agrochemicals IV ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 1995.
Acknowledgments
Downloaded by UNIV OF READING on June 3, 2018 | https://pubs.acs.org Publication Date: May 5, 1995 | doi: 10.1021/bk-1995-0584.pr001
We express our appreciation to the authors who shared the results of their interesting work with us during the symposia. Special thanks go to those who spent many extra hours preparing the chapters for publication in this volume. We hope that the readers—be they chemists, microbiologists, entomologists, plant physiologists, or medicinal chemists—will find the chapters interesting, useful and, above all, stimulating. Last, but not least, we also thank our employers, Buckman Laboratories International, Inc., DuPont, and Zeneca Ag Products; without their generous support of the symposia, this volume and the previous three volumes could not have been published. D O N R. B A K E R
Zeneca Ag Products 1200 South 47th Street Richmond, CA 94804 JOSEPH G. F E N Y E S
Buckman Laboratories International, Inc. 1256 North McLean Boulevard Memphis, TN 38108 G R E G O R Y S. B A S A R A B
DuPont Agricultural Products Stine-Haskell Research Center Newark, D E 19714 September 15, 1994
xiv Baker et al.; Synthesis and Chemistry of Agrochemicals IV ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 1995.
