Pest Management in Field Crops: Principles and Practices

As one may surmise from what has been said, textbooks are not the best places for anyone to seek the latest in insect control recommendations. On the other hand, this book gives both background and latest information on insect pests, their, life histories and an appraisal of the pest problems on various field crops including emerging pests and management with special reference to Integrated Pest Management and Biotechnological Approach in Pest Management. Pest Management in Field Crops : Principles and Practices consists of twenty chapters. Illustrations, few case studies, diagnostic boxes, boldface type, a glossary, Web Sites and model questions with answers are the special features of this book. The book can be used as an introduction for undergraduates. For beginner in entomology, early chapters are dealt with basics for easy understanding the remaining chapters on pest surveillance and crop loss assessment, pesticides, pesticide appliances and preparation of spray fluid, shifting paradigm in pest management, Potential Integrated Pest Management strategies for crop pests, mass production of bio-control agents and biotechnology and pest management. Further an attempt has been made to cover histories, principles, concepts and various methods of pest management and a few case studies in this book so that once learned, the student can handle specific insect problems himself/herself or will know where to get the information he/she needs. We have begun the main part of this book with bionomics, symptoms of damage, mark of identification, viable IPM strategies for key pests and emerging pests on many field crops along with illustrations. First, we enlisted the number of pests in each crop and categorized the importance as sucking pests, borers, leaf feeders and others. Second, we dealt with how these pests cause damage and then, in general, how they are controlled. After these introductory sections we considered the bionomics, economic threshold level and management for major pests of field crops and finally we covered the potential. Integrated Pest Management strategies for crop pests, mass production of bio-control agents and biotechnology and pest management.