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Many farmers use
pheromones against many
pests Pheromones
which the farmers
use are chemicals that
attract others of the
same species.
Some of them attract
males only, a few others
only females, and yet
others, both sexes.
The
common ones are
|
Crops |
Pest
|
Type of
pheromone
|
|
Rice
|
Stem borers,
Army worms |
Monitoring, Mass
trapping |
|
Corn
|
Stem borers |
Monitoring |
|
Cotton
|
Bollworms, boll
weevils |
Monitoring,
|
|
Vegetables,
fruits and many
others |
Cutworms, leaf
miners, fruit
borers |
Monitoring, mass
trapping |
|
Coconut,oil pam,
date palm |
Palm weevils |
Attracting males
and females |
These are synthetic
duplicates of the chemicals
used by the pests for
their own purpose..
They work well in
attracting the insects
of the same species.
So, the best way is
to use them
to know how
many are
there in your field
(monitoring) or to
attract (mass trapping) and kill.
Either way, you don’t
want to attract them
from far and wide, and
see them damage your
crop. Remember, they
don’t follow
man made
boundaries. So, they
come from all around.
The best way for you to
save your crop is
not
to put
them in the centre of
your crop,
but
away from it. This
way, you attract them,
away from your crop. You
can put your rice
pheromone
in coconut or fruit
orchard and vice versa.
If
the attracted insects do
not really fall in the trap, they
will still be
killed by
birds, or other
predators. So,
here what
you do
is the
PIED PIPER TACTIC.
Not the way many
farmers do by putting
them in the centre of
the crop and doing
more damage
than
good.
What
are food lures then, and
where to keep them?
These are
typically short range
attractants, coming
under kairomones. They
don’t attract from far
and wide. So you can put
them just outside your
crop, to push your crop
pest to the outside.
Tulsi
(Indian basel) trap for mango or
banana trap for
cucurbits are such
traps.
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