​Demonstration of Ecological Engineering based Pest Management in Rice Oryza sativa L. through Farmers Participatory Approach

Background: Rice is one of the predominant cereal crop grown in Dharmapuri district of Tamil Nadu state, India in approximately 4000 hectares with a average productivity of 4500 kg/ha. Hoppers, stem borer, leaf folder, gall midge and ear head bugs are the major insect pests for which farmers resort management practices. Instead of curative management, farmers mostly use the insecticide as prophylactic management which leads to unwarranted problems. Though integrated pest management has been advocated as an alternate strategy, farmers are reluctant to use all the components of IPM and rely on mostly on insecticides. In this context, the ecological engineering pest management can form a better alternative, which also coincides with the age old practice of growing border crops in this region Methods: The potential of Ecological Engineering Pest Management (EEPM) was assessed in comparison with Integrated Pest Management (IPM) and Farmers Practice (FP) in five farmer’s fields. Based on the results, ten and twenty front line demonstrations were conducted during consecutive years to study the performance of EEPM in Dharmapuri district. Result: The number of hopper/hill, per cent dead heart, per cent white ears in the EEPM was 10.65, 7.07 and 9.65 and in the IPM module 10.18, 8.40 and 11.55 and in the farmers practice 6.73, 10.73 and 12.75 respectively. The natural enemies viz., coccinellids/hill and spiders/hill were more in EEPM (2.00 and 3.15) and least in the farmers practice (0.40 and 0.86). The number of hoppers/hill, per cent dead heart, number of coccinellids/hill and number of spiders per hill was 8.40, 6.00, 3.00 and 1.40 in EEPM and 6.20, 5.40, 1.20 and 0.60 in farmers practice respectively in the 2016-17 front line demonstrations. The EEPM module recorded 8.1, 8.65, 3.5 and 1.75 hopper/hill, per cent dead heart, coccinellids/hill and spiders/hill in 2017-18 front line demonstrations. The farmers were able to save Rs. 5000/- from the plant protection cost apart from getting additional revenue in EEPM. The combination of border crops, influence of border crop on rodent damage in rice ecosystem and benefits of providing separate niche area than border crop are the researchable areas. In spite of above constraints the EEPM can be followed in rice ecosystem with the locally available crop combination to reduce the insecticide usage and increase the beneficials.