Habitat Manipulation For Insect Pests Management

Cabbage has a great potential in modern agriculture as a short duration crop, which is nutritionally superior and capable of producing high quality food per unit area and time. States like Uttar Pradesh, Orissa, Bihar, Assam, West Bengal, Maharashtra and Karnataka are the major cabbage growing basket of India. Out of the different causes of poor yield of cabbage in India, the prime reason is the damage caused by lepidopteran insect pests right from the vegetative to maturity stage. It is fact that, synthetic chemical insecticides with novel mode of action have been used for many years to counter the problem of insect pests, but the pests become resistant to these conventional insecticides in recent years . In many cases, the insecticides gradually decline in their effectiveness and leads to the unsatisfactory results to control the target pests. However, biological control of pest insects can be improved by providing natural enemies with additional food resources such as floral nectar within the production field. Manipulation of habitat by planting different intercrop and border crop can conserve natural enemies of various noxious pests.