http://www.agrinews.com/news/minnesota_news/the-biological-revolution-is-here/article_12ff66b1-11c9-573a-b11f-51c8fa880105.html
This aritcle provides an interview with Pam Marrone, one of the leading innovators in biopesticides for agriculture. This field has been booming for the past few years as agricultural companies strive to produce greener, more sustainable products. Another driver of this innovation is the fact that developing a new chemical pesticide costs as much as $250M, while developing a new biopesticide may cost only about $7M on average. These biopesticides are typically created by exploring the vast diversity of naturally occurring microbes (i.e. bacteria, archaea, fungi, yeast, etc.) on the planet to determine what effects the microbes have on specific pests. This process requires screening thousands of cultured microbes and eventually selecting the most potent and developing a microbial product that can be effectively applied to a farm field. This process is like finding a needle in a haystack. Marrone says they have screened more than 18,000 microbes and less than 1% have an effect on insects. Currently, the most common and successful biopesticide is Bacillus thuringiensis.