Development of Environment-Friendly Insecticides Based on Enantioselectivity: Bifenthrin as a Case

Abstract

Background: Chiral insecticides significantly contribute to the environmental pollutions recently. As the development of industry and agriculture, increasing number of chiral insecticides are to be introduced into the market. However, their enantioselective toxicology to ecosystem still remains uncertain.

Methods: In this review, we embarked on a structured search of bibliographic databases for peer-reviewed articles regarding the enantioselective effects of bifenthrin, a typical chiral insecticide, on both target and non-target species.

Results: With this enantioselective property of chiral insecticides, they often exhibit adverse effects on non-target species enantioselectively. Specifically, the enantioselective effects of bifenthrin on target and non-target organisms were discussed. In target species, R-bifenthrin exerts more significant activities in deinsectization, compared with S-bifenthrin. On the other hand, Sbifenthrin is more toxic to non-target species than R-bifenthrin, which suggests that the application of sole enantiomer is more efficient and environment-friendly than that of racemate.

Conclusion: This review confirms the choice of environment-friendly insecticides from the perspective of the enantioselectivity of chiral insecticides. To make insecticides more efficient to target species and less toxic to non-target species, further research should be done to investigated the potential effects of targetactive enantiomers on non-target organisms as well as the enantioselective fate of enantiomers in multiple environmental matrix.