Sharron Quisenberry1, Xinzhi Ni2
1Iowa State University, USA
2USDA-ARS, Crop Genetics and Breeding Research Unit, University of Georgia-Tifton, USA

The change in agriculture in recent decades is tremendous, yet the mandate of agricultural industry has been stubbornly the same – to profitably secure the food supply for increasing world population. Although food security and safety is a pan-disciplinary focus for agricultural research worldwide, the discipline of crop protection has led the improvement in the efficiency of agricultural production in the past.  The innovation of concepts and tactics ranged from completely relying on insecticides in the 1950’s to the recent revolution of altering genetic makeup of crop seed for the purpose of protection in the 1990’s. The historic changes of integrated pest management will be highlighted in this presentation. The future prospects of synergistically utilizing the knowledge of genetics and ecology on both pests and host crop plants will be discussed using a symbol of profit – the ancient Chinese coin – the rigid square to present genetics and the round peripheral to present ecology. In the field of genetics research, historical achievements in eugenics of plant/animal hosts and dysgenics of insect pests in the field of insect pests will be reviewed in relation to optimizing crop/animal host production and minimizing pest reproduction. Furthermore, milestones in interdisciplinary research of ecological genetics of both hosts and pests (such as, cisgenics, transgenics, mutigenics, and epigenetics) will be highlighted. The opportunities and challenges in the new era of integrated pest management are paramount to increasing food supply and promoting agriculture sustainability for future generations.