Plant-Based Insecticides for Controlling Drosophila suzukii: Opportunities and Challenges for Biorational Nanoproducts

Drosophila suzukii (Diptera) is a polyphagous fly responsible for a huge loss in production of thin-skinned berries, usually controlled with low-selective synthetic pesticides, which can be toxic for biodiversity and human health. Biorational control of D. suzukii is challenging, despite many known lethal compounds, since most experiments happen in laboratory conditions, and agroecosystems include complex biotic and abiotic variables. Nanoencapsulation rises as an efficient alternative for optimizing pesticide development by protecting active ingredients and increasing selectivity. This review aimed to gather recent (over the last 5 years) research about plant-derived insecticides with the potential to control D. suzukii, examining their toxicity mechanisms and exposure methods, and to identify research gaps and perspectives, especially for nanoproducts. These efforts resulted in the selection of 31 articles, evaluating lethality and behavioral modulation caused by plant-based compounds, which exerted mainly attraction, repellency, and oviposition deterrence. Most studies were carried out under laboratory conditions, mostly testing plants from the Lamiaceae and Asteraceae botanical families, indicating essential oils as potential short-life pesticides against every life stage of D. suzukii, although their physicochemical instability limits field application. There are few studies addressing nano-pesticides for controlling D. suzukii, and these data contribute to botanical prospection for pesticide compounds and point to the development of plant-based nano-pesticides for controlling D. suzukii as a research gap with potential to enable field trials.