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Soil Predatory Mites and Microbe-Mediated Biocontrol: Advancing Sustainable Pest Management in Agricultural Systems
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Researchers review how soil predatory mites and plant growth-promoting bacteria work together to suppress agricultural pests, highlighting that emerging soil contaminants — including microplastics and heavy metals — disrupt these beneficial trophic interactions and undermine natural biocontrol services.
Biological control of soil-borne pests represents a critical ecosystem service that sustains soil and plant health. Soil ecosystems harbor complex food webs, in which microfauna, such as nematodes and protists, regulate microbial communities and drive nutrient mineralization, supporting above-ground productivity. Soil predatory mites, commonly known as Acarine Biocontrol Agents (ABA), function as trophic-level omnivores, exerting top-down control on nematodes and other invertebrates, while benefiting from bottom-up support through free-living nematodes (FLN) that graze microbial communities. These predator–prey interactions enhance mite fitness by providing essential biomolecules, including ω3 long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids, which improve developmental rates, reproductive performance, and biocontrol efficiency. Plant Growth-Promoting Bacteria (PGPB) complement ABA-mediated biocontrol by producing phytohormones, siderophores, nematicidal compounds, and inducing systemic resistance, thereby directly and indirectly suppressing plant-parasitic nematodes. Conservation biological control (CBC) strategies that maintain functional soil food webs through minimal disturbance, organic amendments, and cover crops are pivotal for sustaining ABA and PGPB populations. Moreover, soil physical structure, organic matter content, and chemical environment influence predator mobility, prey accessibility, and microbial activity, further shaping biocontrol outcomes. Emerging soil threats, including microplastics, heavy metals, and radioactive contamination, disrupt these interactions, emphasizing the need for integrated management approaches. Overall, understanding complex trophic interactions and microbe-mediated mechanisms provides a framework for designing sustainable, multifunctional soil management strategies that enhance ecosystem resilience and agricultural productivity.
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The interplay between soil pollution, insect biodiversity and soil health: A comprehensive review
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This review examines how soil pollutants including heavy metals, pesticides, microplastics, and organic contaminants affect soil insect populations and broader ecosystem health. Researchers found that these pollutants cause both direct harm to insects through toxicity and reproductive impairment, and indirect harm by degrading habitats and altering soil properties. The disruption of insect-driven processes like nutrient cycling leads to cascading effects that reduce agricultural productivity and ecosystem resilience.
Interactions among Heavy Metals, Microplastics and Pesticides in Soil and Advances in Microbial Remediation
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Tiny plastic bits in farm soil don't just pollute on their own—they can grab onto heavy metals and pesticides, making these toxins travel farther, last longer, or become more harmful together than any one pollutant alone, which matters since this soil grows the food we eat. This review pulls together existing research on how these three pollutants interact, and highlights promising work using soil bacteria and plants to break down or neutralize this combined contamination. The main takeaway: scientists still don't fully understand how these pollutants team up in real-world conditions, so more research is needed before we can reliably clean up farmland facing this triple threat.
Microplastics inAgricultural Soils: Sources, Fate,and Interactions with Other Contaminants
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This review examines microplastics as emerging soil contaminants, focusing on their interactions with co-occurring pollutants such as heavy metals, pesticides, and antibiotics, and assessing the compound toxic risks these combinations pose to agricultural ecosystems and food safety.
The forgotten impacts of plastic contamination on terrestrial micro- and mesofauna: A call for research
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This review highlights the overlooked impact of microplastics on tiny soil organisms like mites, springtails, and nematodes that play critical roles in keeping soil ecosystems healthy. Ingesting microplastics can harm their development and reproduction, which disrupts nutrient cycling and soil food webs. Since these organisms help maintain the soil that grows our food, their decline from plastic pollution could have cascading effects on agriculture and human nutrition.
An emerging risk to pest biocontrol: Polyethylene microplastic affects the efficacy of Arma chinensis and Beauveria bassiana against Hyphantria cunea
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Scientists found that microplastic pollution disrupts nature's own pest control system: it weakens beneficial predator insects that eat crop-damaging pests, while actually helping a pest-killing fungus work better. This matters because farmers rely on these natural predators instead of chemical pesticides, so as microplastics build up in soil and plants, our food system's natural defenses against pests could become less effective—potentially leading to more crop damage or increased pesticide use.
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