Contents
Definition of pest and pest management
Definition of Pest
Any biological object that cause economic loss, may be termed as a pest.
(It is a very common term, it must be a biological object)
E.g. insect 8: mites, rodents, bacteria, fungus, virus, nematodes, bird & weeds.
Forms of plant and animal life when they exist under circumstances that make them injurious to plant, man, domestic animals and other articles or substance.
Pest is generally considered to include those organisms which come into conflict with man, compete with him for his crops and livestock, affect his health comfort and destroy his property.
Definition of Pesticide
Pesticides means any substances or mixture of substances intended for preventing, destroying, repelling any insect, rodent, fungus, weeds or any other form of life declared to be a pest. The word pesticide is an all-inclusive term which includes a no individual chemicals designed especially for the controlling of certain pest. The word ‘cide’ (ending or suffixing) means to kill of Killer. Most of the specific pesticide means are specific to the pest for which they intended to control.
All insecticides are pesticide but all pesticides, are not necessarily insecticide.
Agro-ecosystem
Individual organisms of the same species live together as a population. Populations of different species live together form a community and the community is influenced by its physical environment. We called such a complex system biotic and abiotic factor’s as ecosystem. So, ecosystems are self-sufficient habitats where living organisms and the non-living environment interact to exchange energy and matter a continuing cycle. Ecosystems are entities such as forests, ponds, fields and in general they are self-regulating. Ecosystem interrelation Agriculture is called Agro- ecosystems.
Economic threshold (ET)
Economic threshold may be defined as the, pest density at which control measure should be applied to prevent the increasing pest population from reaching the economic injury level. The economic threshold always represents a pest density lower than that of the economic injury level to the initiation of control measures. So that they can take effect before the pest density exceeds the economic injury level.
Economic Injury level
Various definitions have been proposed for economic injury level. It may he defined as lowest pest population density that will cause economic damage level at which damage can no longer be tolerated and the level before which it is desirable to initiate deliberate control activities. At this level, the pest population that produces incremental damage equals to the cost of preventing the damage.
Equilibrium position
It is that level of pest population before the ET; which actually requires no control measure for the pest density. This an average population density of an insect for over a long period of time, unaffected by the temporary interventions of pest control. The population density fluctuate about this mean level as a result of the influence of density, dependent factors such as parasite, predators and diseases.
Pest management Science
Pest management is the intelligence of selection and use of pest control actions that will ensure favourable economic, ecological and sociological consequence. Pest control actions include the monitoring, of pest increases, judicious use of pesticide for the effective communication that no action is necessary. Pest management deals with all available technique which are evaluated considerably into a unified programme to manage pest population, so that economic loss can be avoided and adverse side effect on the environment are minimized.
Pest management concept detects a tolerable approach to pest status. The practice of pest management determines how the life system of a pest needs to be modified to reduce its numbers to tolerate level that is below the economic threshold level.
