Gerben J. Messelink

1 Introduction Biological control was originally centred on the use of specialist natural enemies targeting specific key pests (van Lenteren and Woets 1988). While such biological control agents (BCAs) remain valuable, generalist predators have gained increasing prominence in modern pest management programs (Messelink et al. 2012; van Lenteren et al. 2018).

Introduction Over the last decade, preventive biological control programs have emerged as a key strategy for successful pest control in protected crops (van Lenteren & Nicot, 2020).