**Abstract**

The agricultural sector of Asian countries supports 60% of the global population, accounting one-fifth of the world's agricultural land. Despite the gap between demand and supply of food is gradually increasing due to the damages caused by insect and other pest attacks on the limited agricultural land, the pest attack has influenced the entire agriculture sector either directly or indirectly, causing socioeconomic losses. To combat, farmers have been using conventional agrochemicals nonjudiciously that lead to adverse effects such as pesticide resistance, environmental contamination, and non-target toxicity. In this regard, new-generation agrochemical formulation techniques are advantageous over conventional pesticides and play a vital role in sustainable agriculture by fulfilling the demand of over-rising food supply to feed the increasing population. These formulations exhibit desired bio-efficacy at lower doses and have minimum possibility to leave pesticide residues in crop products and the environment. Institute of Pesticide Formulation Technology (IPFT), Gurugram, is one of the leading institutes in Asia, which is actively engaged in developing new-generation formulations to deliver safer, efficient, and environment-friendly pesticide formulations. So far, IPFT has developed 60 pesticide formulations and transferred technologies to different agrochemical industries globally. The new-generation formulations developed by IPFT mainly include microemulsion, nanoemulsion, capsulated suspension, nano-encapsulation, an emulsion in water, mixed formulations including several botanical pesticide formulations. The new advancement in pesticide delivery systems is very supportive in combating the crisis faced by the agricultural sector. In this chapter, formulation of different new-generation pesticides and their advancement are summarized.

**Keywords:** agriculture, agrochemicals, pesticides, new-generation formulations, pest, environment protection, user-friendly, crop protection

#### **1. Introduction**

Pesticides are the integral and significant part of modern agriculture. Pesticide usage is incredibly valuable for increasing food production in fulfilling the demand of over-rising population. It has been previously stated by Webster et al. [1] that without pesticide use considerable economic losses will occur. The application rate of agricultural pesticides has swiftly augmented in different developing and developed countries [2]. Therefore, pesticides help in significant increase of yield and prevent the crop losses due to pest and pathogen attack. Application in a smaller quantity gives positive results but large quantity causes negative effect on environment, human health, and other beneficial organisms such as insects responsible for pollination [3]. However, non-judicious use causes various detrimental effects on environment and damages the ecosystem including economic loss of the farmers.

In formulated forms, pesticides are effective in very small quantity. There are many conventional pesticide formulations available in the market, which are being marketed and used in Asian countries in the form of dustable powder (DP), wettable powder (WP), emulsifiable concentrate (EC), soluble liquids (SL), etc. These conventional formulations are effective but due to certain limitations such as toxicity, cost, pest resistance, environmental contamination, death of beneficial organisms (e.g., honey bee), and human health problems they attracted interests toward advanced and safer pesticide formulation techniques [4]. Interestingly, in past 1990s, Asian countries explored certain new-generation formulation, which were solvent free, long lasting, safe and caused no effect on non-target organisms [5, 6].

With the advancement of new formulation technologies in Asian countries, many new-generation formulations have been developed to maintain a special place in international markets. In Asian countries, government supports the pesticide supply for the enhanced food production but its overuse (conventional formulations) has resulted in pesticide residue problem causing non-target and ecosystem toxicity.

In order to improve the safety of the user and ecosystem from the hazardous pesticides, Institute of Pesticide Formulation Technology (IPFT), India, has been engaged in developing new-generation formulations of synthetic as well as botanical pesticides. This chapter summarizes all the formulation advancement developed by IPFT for the safe and smart delivery of pesticide and reduces the adverse effects associated with conventional formulations.
