Insect Pests of Fruits, Plantation, Medicinal & Aromatic Crops

Integrated pest management (IPM)

• IPM is a new system approach which has been necessitated primarily out of the growing concern about the undesirable side effects of large scale use of organic insecticides and often failure of the same to provide for suppression of pests at economic level. Attempts to totally suppress the pests by insecticides may lead to the following problems:
• Development of resistance to chemicals in pest population outbreak of secondary pests resurgence of treated populations unacceptable residues on food and forage products and association legal complications destruction of beneficial insect predators, parasites and pollination hazards to personnel involved in insecticide application, domestic animals and wild life; and
• Expense of pesticides, involving the cost of materials, labour and maintenance of equipments.
• Thus in any IPM programme, the ecological factors are exploited, the control methods are so designed that they are compatible with natural mortality factors in order to optimize control.