Editorial

The present editorial team of the Journal of Pesticide Science (JPS) started in April 2017 and will end in March 2021. The new editorial team will start in April 2021 under the new Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Kazuhiro Takagi. The JPS was accepted as a PubMed Central (PMC) journal in October 2018, and publications in the JPS can be found via PubMed search dating back to 2016 (Vol. 41, No. 1). The JPS was also listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) in January 2020. Along with this, the article title page has been renewed from Vol. 46 (2021). The new title page is set as a color page, and a graphical abstract is inserted near the Abstract text. Articles (Regular Article, Brief Report, Review, and Technical Report) are welcome to be submitted. Commentary and Society Award Paper entries are also published when needed. A color manuscript is only available on the website. The print version is published in black and white.

During this editorial team, the editorial board edited a second “Special Issue” of JPS, which is for insect growth regulators (IGRs). The first special issue, on plant growth regulators (PGRs), was published in 2018 (Vol. 43, No. 3). Prior to the publication of these special issues, a “special topic” was published three times, as follows.

1. 1. Application of omics-technologies to the agricultural and environmental sciences: 5 Reviews and 4 Commentary (2006).
2. 2. Recent advances in studies on actions of pesticides and bioactive molecules: 1 Review and 8 Commentaries (2008).
3. 3. Carboxylesterases—from function to the field: an overview of carboxylesterase biochemistry, structure-activity relationship, and use in the environmental: 8 Reviews, 1 Original Article, and 2 Commentaries (2010).

To edit current special issue, I asked invited speakers of the PacifiChem2020 symposium to contribute to the JPS. Although PacifiChem2020 was postponed until 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the editorial board decided to edit the special issue about IGRs for the JPS. The symposium title in PacifiChem2020 was “Future of Insect Growth Regulators and Utilization of in Silico Technology.” In the special issue of the JPS, 5 Reviews, 8 Regular Articles, and 1 Brief Report are posted, in which juvenile hormone, molting hormone, and chitin-related studies are described. I also asked Marek Jindra, who is currently the editor of Insect Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, to contribute to the writing of “Commentary” for this special issue.

I surveyed the contents of the JPS, the first volume of which was published in 1976. The research topics covered in this journal have changed drastically during the past half century. English papers published in the first issue of Vol. 1 were mainly related to useful pesticides such as gamma BHC, sumithion, malathion, polyoxin, pyrethroids, and benthiocarb, but the majority of recent publications pertain to the environmental science of pesticides. Of course, the discovery studies of novel pesticides have been continuously published. The history of the PSSJ and JPS is summarized in Japanese Journal of Pesticide Science (JJPS, Vol. 44, No. 1, 2019). In the searching of past articles published in the JPS and JJPS, I found a commentary related to IGRs, titled “Progress in insect control chemicals from juvenile hormone research,” written by Dr. Gerald T. Brooks. This commentary was published in Vol. 12, No. 1, 113–123 (1987). The contents of his commentary are

• Synthesis directed by the juvenile hormone structure
  • Fig. 1 Structures od chemicals mentioned in the text

• Structural directions from biochemical investigations
  • 1. Juvenile hormone biosynthesis
    • Fig. 2 Biosynthesis and biodegradation of insect juvenile hormone, using JH III as an example

  • 2. Juvenile hormone biodegradation
    • Fig. 3 Bioactivation of precocenes related compounds.
    • Fig. 4 Structures of chemistry mentioned in the text.

• Future prospects

As shown in this special issue, studies with new technologies such as rational design, high-throughput screening, and virtual screening are contained. Original papers on new chemistry and bioassays are published. New targets, such as insect growth regulators, are proposed for future papers.