Professor John Pickett receives New IPM 2025 Lifetime Achievement honour

We would like to extend our heartfelt congratulations to Professor John Pickett on his receipt of the IPM Lifetime Achievement Award.

Ther are few scientists have shaped Integrated Pest Management (IPM) as enduringly as Emeritus Professor John Pickett. Awarded the Lifetime Achievement honour at the New IPM Symposium at Swansea University recently, the award is intended to recognise Professor Pickett for a career spanning nearly five decades that has fundamentally changed how the world manages insect pests by working with nature rather than in opposition.

Professor Pickett pioneered the use of semiochemicals, which are naturally occurring chemical signals that mediate interactions between organisms. These include pheromones, used for communication within a species, and allomones, which influence behaviour between species. By understanding and exploiting these signals, Professor Pickett’s work aided in replacing broad-spectrum chemical pesticides with highly targeted, more environmentally benign control strategies.

His research has underpinned some of the most successful IPM innovations worldwide such as well-known “push–pull system” developed for smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. This intervention uses plant-derived semiochemicals to repel pests from crops (“push”) while attracting them to trap plants (“pull”). This approach has improved food security for millions while reducing pesticide use and enhancing biodiversity.

In his keynote lecture, “IPM: Reflections upon nearly 50 years of innovation, with new needs and opportunities coming fast,” Professor Pickett reflected on landmark advances in pheromone-based monitoring and control, while looking firmly to the future. He urged the community to harness evolutionary biology to stay ahead of resistance, adopt tools such as AI and RNA sequencing for faster gene discovery, and expand biotechnological production of pheromones to make sustainable solutions affordable at scale.

Professor Pickett is a Fellow of the Royal Society, a CBE (which was awarded by our late Queen for services to biological chemistry), and a recipient of the Wolf Prize in Agriculture.  We are delighted to have Professor Pickett as a part of our School challenging the next generation of chemists to innovate with creativity and ecological insight.