Exotic pest research well worth the price

This special issue of California Agriculture vividly illustrates that exotic pests may impose huge potential losses on California agriculture and the statewide economy. It also defines some serious gaps in our scientific knowledge of these pests knowledge needed to undergird effective prevention, eradication, and control programs for the lengthening list of exotic pests to which California agriculture is vulnerable. The risk of major economic loss to these pests is magnified by increasingly stringent public regulation of pesticides, by genetic resistance of pests to the diminishing number of chemical controls still available, and, in some cases, by the absence of any effective controls for certain pests illustrated by the devastating invasion of sweetpotato whitefly in Southern California.