20 Mar Insect Pest of Pulses in North Eastern Himalaya and Rationale for Their Management
उत्तर पूर्वी हिमालय क्ष्ोत्रो में दालों के कीट पतंग व उनका प्रबंधन Insect pests inflict enormous losses to the agricultural production system. Anecdotal evidences also indicates rise in losses, despite increasing use of chemical pesticides. At the same time, there is rising public concern about the potential adverse effect of chemical pesticides on human health, environment and biodiversity. The intensity of these negative externalities though cannot be eliminated altogether, but that could be minimized through IPM techniques. The North Eastern Hill (NEH) region of India is characterized by inaccessibility, fragility and marginality with rich biodiversity, ethnicity and societal set up. It has wide range of agro-climatic conditions with high rainfall and low productivity. The agro-climatic conditions are very conducive for the growth and multiplication of the insect fauna and their natural enemies and they pose serious problems with resultant low productivity in almost all the crops. Pulses are important food crops due to their high protein and essential amino acid content. Like many leguminous crops, pulses play a key role in crop rotation due to their ability to fix nitrogen. The important pulses grown in the NEH region are pigeon pea, cowpea, rice beans, rajamash, bengal gram, mung bean, urd bean, lentil, faba bean and lathyrus etc. Due to favorable climatic conditions, pulse crop...