Manav Mander
Tribune News Service
Ludhiana, March 17th
A team of experts from Krishi Vigyan Kendra, SAS Nagar (Mohali), after visiting various fields in the district, found that some farmers are unable to distinguish between beneficial and harmful insects. Misidentification of insects and the amount of insecticides used to control those insects result in significant economic losses for farmers. “Recording the life cycle of insect pests is the first step in effective management, which requires important information about the occurrence of specific insects and their numbers. These records will help farmers effectively plan and manage the target insect for years to come. The insect infestation on the crop depends on the type of plant, the cultivation practices and the climatic conditions of the place, ”said Dr. Harmeet Kaur, assistant professor for crop protection at KVK, SAS Nagar (Mohali).
The need today is not to kill the insects with harmful chemicals, but to use wisdom and common sense to manage them by keeping them below the economic threshold for good crop yield and a healthy environment, she said.
Follow these steps
- Follow cultivation practices recommended by agricultural universities, such as: B. the use of varieties that are resistant or tolerant to insect infestation, the timely sowing and harvesting of plants, the use of an appropriate amount of seeds and fertilizers. For example, the Sarson crop should preferably be sown by the third week of October to control mustard aphids.
- It is important to regularly monitor the fields for the presence of target insects so that they can be inspected before they reach economic thresholds.
- Farmers can use pheromone traps to catch fruit flies, light traps to catch moths, and yellow sticky traps to catch white flies.
- The crop is more susceptible to insect and disease infestation if the same crop is grown in the same location every year. Crop rotation is the best strategy to solve this problem.
