Manage insects for improved crop yield, say Indian agri experts

A team of experts of Krishi Vigyan Kendra, SAS Nagar (Mohali) after visiting various fields in the district have observed that some farmers are unable to differentiate between beneficial and harmful insects. Wrong identification of insects and the amount incurred on insecticides to control these insects will lead to heavy economic loss to the farmers. 

“Keeping record about life cycle of the harmful insects is the first step for their effective management which requires important information regarding appearance of particular insects and their numbers. This record keeping will help the farmers to effectively plan and manage the target insect in the coming years. Insect attack on the crop depends upon crop variety, crop cultivation practices and climatic conditions of that place,” said Dr Harmeet Kaur, Assistant Professor, Plant Protection, KVK, SAS Nagar (Mohali).

Today’s need is not to kill the insects with harmful chemicals but to manage them with wisdom and common sense by keeping them below economic threshold level to get good crop yield along with healthy environment, she said.

Follow these steps

-  Follow crop cultivation practices as recommended by agricultural universities such as use of varieties that are resistant or tolerant against insect attack, timely sowing and harvesting of crop, use of adequate quantity of seed and fertilisers. For example, sarson crop should be preferably sown up to third week of October for the management of mustard aphid.

-  It is important to regularly monitor the fields for target insect appearance so that they can be controlled before they reach economic threshold levels.

-  Farmers can use pheromone traps to capture fruit fly, light traps to capture moths and yellow sticky traps to capture white fly.

-  The crop becomes more prone to attack of insects and diseases if same crop is grown at same place every year. Crop rotation is the best strategy to deal with this problem.